Why everyone’s talking about... Cheugy

‘CHEUGY’ narrowly missed being named Collins Dictionary’s word of the year last week – which may come as a surprise to the majority of people who have never used or heard it before. So what does it mean… and, more importantly, how do you pronounce it?

It’s ‘chew-gee’ – and is a disparaging word most often used by Generation Z (under-25s) about anything millennials (aged 25 to 40) do, wear or own that is deemed a bit tacky, cringeworthy or out of date. The biggest sin is trying a bit too hard to be on trend but just not quite getting it right. Urban Dictionary says bluntly that cheugy is ‘the opposite of trendy’.

Examples?

Decorative wooden signs in your home (double cheugy points if they say something about wine o’clock), laughing-face emojis, skinny jeans, Gucci belts with the double-G logo, Friends repeats and capsule coffeemakers. Last week, blonde hair was dubbed cheugy, as fashionable celebrities such as Gigi Hadid and Florence Pugh have started dyeing their locks a darker hue.

It seems very arbitrary and cruel…

It came from the internet: what do you expect? Some have also claimed that it’s a sexist word, as most things deemed cheugy tend to be favoured by women. The term certainly has the overtone of a high-school clique, picking on outsiders for having different tastes.

So where did it come from?

Los Angeles software developer Gaby Rasson says she created the word in 2013 at school. But it really took off when a TikTok video went viral this year, and now the hashtag #cheugy has 250million views on the video platform. However, cynics have suggested that the term is not actually as widespread among Generation Z as some would have you believe, and instead is more often used as ‘millennialon-millennial violence’.

In other words?

‘Cheugy’ is, itself, cheugy.