Etymology
Chic is a French word, established in English since at least the 1870s. Early references in English dictionaries classified it as slang and New Zealand-born lexicographer Eric Partridge noted, with reference to its colloquial meaning, that it was "not so used in Fr." There is a similar word in German, schick, with a meaning similar to chic, which may be the origin of the word in French; another theory links chic to the word chicane. Although the French pronunciation (shēk or "sheek") is now virtually standard and was that given by Fowler, chic was often rendered in the anglicised form of "chick".
In a fictional vignette for Punch (c. 1932) Mrs F. A. Kilpatrick attributed to a young woman who 70 years later would have been called a "chavette" the following assertion: "It 'asn't go no buttons neither ... That's the latest ideer. If you want to be chick you just 'ang on to it, it seems".
By contrast, in Anita Loos' novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), the diarist Lorelei Lee recorded that "the French use the word 'sheik' for everything, while we only seem to use if for gentlemen when they seem to resemble Rudolf Valentino" (a pun derived from the latter's being the star of the 1921 silent film, The Sheik).
The Oxford Dictionary gives the comparative and superlative forms of chic as chicer and chicest. These are wholly English words: the French equivalents would be plus chic and le/la plus chic. Super-chic is sometimes used: "super-chic Incline bucket in mouth-blown, moulded glass".
An adverb chicly has also appeared: "Pamela Gross ... turned up chicly dressed down".
The use of the French très chic (very chic) by an English speaker – "Luckily it's très chic to be neurotic in New York" – is usually rather pretentious, but sometimes merely facetious—Micky Dolenz of The Monkees described ironically the Indian-style suit he wore at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 as "très chic". Über-chic is roughly the mock-German equivalent: "Like his clubs, it's super-modern, über-chic, yet still comfortable".
The opposite of "chic" is unchic: "the then uncrowded, unchic little port of St Tropez".
Read more about this topic: Chic (style)
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)