To think 'chav' is not an okay thing to call people?

I would and do! Smoking weed is chavvy regardless who does it. I don’t know how you define MC but I called a whole group of boys on expensive looking bikes chavs the other day for deliberately knocking over all the cones in the road

Bloody hell, we are council housed and my DH has a work van (we have our own business), we've got no hope 😂

My oh just said chavs are one step up from the estate he grew up on. They had a van and a job!

Thank goodness I don't know the same people as you. No one I know uses it and I'd think unfavourably of anyone who did.

Exactly this!

The only drug users I know personally are rich, they often bragged about it and did it at Christmas parties I attended.

Their kids were known weed smokers, they did coke most weekends and held these kind of parties at home.

I thought it was used to describe the unemployed dressed in designer attire in an attempt at the appearance of wealth

The price of their house or where they were educated doesn’t stop it from being chavvy behaviour. There are plenty of rich chavs.

But people wouldn’t look at them & call them chavs which is my point, they likely would label you one though regardless of your behaviour.

I was told it came from Council House And Van so a typical labourer type job. But it seems there are lots of meanings across the country

No one would call a MC kid smoking weed a chav.

This thread proves that chav can mean anything 😆

The price of their house or where they were educated doesn’t stop it from being chavvy behaviour. There are plenty of rich chavs.

I’m from a very WC background. Do you not think they sneer back?

It's a very British thing to punch down at the people immediately below you in the pecking order, I suppose.

thats true

An old friend I hadn’t seen for years used it when she visited me and overheard a few neighbours who were, at the time, a bit shouty and sweary.

She asked who lived in the flats behind me and then said ‘they sound a bit chavvy’.

It’s not just descriptive of certain styles, mannerisms and income…it’s description plus a combination of a laugh and a sneer. It’s a code used by middle class or upper class people to convey a negative attitude to working class people or those they deem to be working class

Horrible thing to say or think. I would never use it (and was disgusted with my friend)

It’s a horrible sneery word.

They are dicks

No, they don't.

or ‘it reeks of weed around here, I’m sick of these chavs’. If they don’t like being called chavs they could behave like civilised people

the people smoking weed on my street went to private school & live in a 1.2m terrace…

Always found it a horrible snobby word. I'd never say it and nor would any of my friends. My family's working class origins with middle class people in the younger generation (me included, and my cousins, all first generation to go to university etc). A few older, working-class family members still say chav about various neighbours etc and I cringe every time - they see themselves as a cut above the other people on their estate and they're keen to point this out. It's a very British thing to punch down at the people immediately below you in the pecking order, I suppose.

Chav isn't a social class descriptor per session though. It's not the equivalent of working class if that's what you're trying to say. Or do you mean underclass? It's perfectly possible to be working class ( which can't be helped) and not be a chav.
Many attributes which make someone a chav are personal choices eg the type of clothes, make up, hairstyle, jewellery, rudeness, aggressive behaviour, lack of aspiration etc which can all be helped, so by your own reckoning chav is just as acceptable a word as snobby.

What is the social class ?

Well there's some dispute about exactly what kind of person the term refers to - variously working class or sub-working class ('underclass'), but sometimes it includes a particular way of dressing, and sometimes it refers to people who have the temerity to flash money around while daring not to be middle class. But it would be odd to try and claim that class isn't a big part of it.

@5128gap yeah, you're not wrong.
I just know that people do make those judgements, and I'm wondering if there could ever be an 'acceptable' word to use, while showing you believe it's uncouth or whatever, without seeming so unartful and snobby.
I guess there isn't. But the perception by some of people being 'lower' won't ever go away just be removing chav from popular parlance.
I used to live in the states and the equivalent there was 'oh, that's/he's so ghetto'. Just as bad really.

For me chavviness is about how people behave and I use it quite a lot because there’s plenty to warrant the description where I live. Eg ‘I didn’t sleep well last night because of those chavs shouting at each other in the street’ or ‘it reeks of weed around here, I’m sick of these chavs’. If they don’t like being called chavs they could behave like civilised people 🤷‍♀️