1. Noun reflecting a small
nugget of excrement left between the buttocks by rushed or ineffectual wiping, thus causing continued discomfort until it is removed or becomes dislodged.
2. Noun reflecting a
person whose presence causes a similar degree of irritation to that depicted in the first
definition.
3. Noun reflecting a particularly posh
person, educated at "one of the finer” English boarding schools, typically brought up in a mansion in the Home Counties only to spend the best part of their teens and early twenties living at the Chelsea townhouse left mostly vacant by
parents who prefer the
family home in the country. They can be identified most easily by their tendency to speak with an almost patronisingly nasal slant on Received Pronunciation and their apparent failure to understand anyone that doesn't do the same, regardless of class, nationality or ethnicity. Other tell-tale signs, although by no means uniform, are tailored shirts (often pink), big hair and showy, obnoxious behaviour in the men, and sunglasses (whatever the weather), ugg boots, eating disorders and peroxide blonde hair in the women.
Etymologically, it derives from the adjective
chuff, meaning posh, which, in turn derives from chuffed, as in pleased with oneself, since posh English people often come off as quite smug and seem oblivious to the struggles of those who are not upper class. The suffix nut
may simply have been added because of the internal rhyme and its meaning as
head (ie posh-
head), or, perhaps, fanatic (eg film-nut), since chuffnuts seem very much immersed in their own rather small world, often acting surprised when another chuffnut knows someone they know, when, in
reality, the fact that they are a chuffnut means they could only have been to one of maybe a dozen prep schools, a further dozen boarding schools and perhaps five universities (Newcastle, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds & Bristol currently being the worst offenders, although an elite Oxbridge contingent - from which
Conservative MPs David Cameron and Boris Johnson hail - should not be entirely discounted).
N.
B. It has been argued that the first two definitions could also have contributed to the third, since the blinkered
conservative views nurtured by chuffnuts' sheltered existence and the afore-mentioned nasal tone with which they speak (particularly amongst
female specimens, where it can manifest itself as rather shrill) can often prove somewhat irritating. However, the claim remains unsubstantiated.
1. “Remember to wipe carefully children, because this is the last service station we'll be stopping at and after eating so many cashews last night, you're liable to end up spending the rest of the
journey being bothered by a chuffnut.”
2. “He had a tendency to cling to whatever party guest had yet to learn what a chuffnut he was, or at least, those too polite to tell him just to
fuck off. “
3. “When did all these chuffnuts move to Battersea? I just took a walk through the
park and saw 3 couples wearing matching pashminas.”
