Chic
adj, name, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Good form; style. uncountable
"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."
- 2 A kind of ritual buffoon or clown in Yucatec Maya culture.
"the chics of Dzitas, Yucatán, if they caught a small boy, removed his clothes and rubbed gunpowder in his anus. In the Yucatec barrio of “Santiago,” the chics amuse crowds by lassoing men and fining them"
- 3 elegance by virtue of being fashionable wordnet
- 4 A person with (a particular type of) chic. countable
"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)."
- 1 Elegant, stylish.
"Mrs. Hominy, sir, is the lady of Major Hominy, one of our chicest spirits; and belongs Toe^([sic]) one of our most aristocratic families."
- 1 elegant and stylish wordnet
- 1 A diminutive of the male given name Charles.
Example
More examples"It's said to be a girls' high school characterised by its quiet and traditional feel and a chic, high-class uniform."
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”).
Borrowed from Yucatec Maya chiʼik (“coati; buffoon”).
Related phrases
More for "chic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.