chic
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: shēk
ipa: /ʃiːk/
ipa: /ʃik/
rhymes: -iːk
homophone: sheik
homophone: sheikh stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
Forms: form: chics
Etymology: Borrowed from French chic (“elegant”), which in turn is probably borrowed from German Schick (“elegant appearance; tasteful presentation”). The word is akin to Dutch schielijk (“hasty”), schikken (“to arrange”) and Old English sċēon (“to happen”).
Senses: examples: text: A little pear-grey glove, dropped and abandoned on the floor, may give its owner's sex and chic to the whole room; whilst an entire house-full of so-called womanly trifles will have only a neuter flavour about them, if chic be not there.
ref: 1877 September, A. de F., “Chic”, in Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, volume LI, London: Richard Bentley & Son, […] ; New York, N.Y.: Willmer and Rogers; Paris: Galignani, →OCLC, page 115:
text: You can be assured that whatever article of wearable chic you pick-up at this Newbury St. shop, you will not see it walking up and down the streets a hundred times.
ref: 1976 December 18, David Holland, “Dear Santa...”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 25, page 11:
text: [T]he macabre, when celebrated with the panache of a new range of retailed products, became a glib manifestation of chic: […]
ref: 2007, Matthew Craske, “A New Theatre of Death and Commemoration”, in The Silent Rhetoric of the Body: A History of Monumental Sculpture and Commemorative Art in England, 1720–1770, New Haven, Conn.; London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 60:
text: Terms such as "ghetto chic" and "gangsta' chic" are part of a cluster of high-fashion terms that describe styles that are in vogue but set against mainstream norms. Other "chics" include "nerd chic," "geek chic," and the controversial "heroin chic," in which models appear as drug addicts […]
ref: 2014, Susan Falls, “Notes [Notes to Chapter 5]”, in Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds, New York, N.Y.; London: New York University Press, →ISBN, footnote 4, page 195:
glosses: Good form; style.
examples: text: It was probably fortunate for him [Bernard Lazare] that the police, who started keeping a fairly regular watch on his activities in April 1893, also inclined towards thinking that he was merely following the fashion of other young ‘bourgeois chics’ (though at times they evidently had second thoughts).
ref: 1978, Nelly Wilson, “Anarchism”, in Bernard-Lazare: Antisemitism and the Problem of Jewish Identity in Late Nineteenth-century France, paperback edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, published 2010, →ISBN, part I (Before the Dreyfus Affair), page 47:
text: Striving for admission in those exclusive circles so as to gain higher social recognition and acceptance by the chics, anthropologists who were already subservient to other philosophical musings such as hermeneutics and phenomenology, started to upgrade their language and to treat cultures as "texts".
ref: 1995, Pierre Maranda, “Beyond Postmodernism: Resonant Anthropology”, in Gilles Bibeau, Ellen Corin, editors, Beyond Textuality: Asceticism and Violence in Anthropological Interpretation (Approaches to Semiotics; 120), Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 329:
text: The potheads were either smoking or eating or giggling or some combination of the three. The heroin chics were nodding out.
ref: 2005, Pamela Anderson, Star Struck, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, page 149:
glosses: A person with (a particular type of) chic.
Derived terms: sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: chiconomics
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: ecochic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: geek chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: heroin chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: porno chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: radical chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: scruffy chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: shabby chic
sense: Terms derived from chic (noun)
word: tongue-in-chic