Acronyms: WAGs and CHAPs

We've written before about the phenonemon of WAGs – the wives and girlfriends of the English national football team. It's an acronym much loved by the tabloid press over here, and Wikipedia has quite a good entry on the term WAG.

It occurred to me recently, however, that although collectively these wives and girlfriends can be referred to as WAGs, it is somewhat difficult to have one WAG, for one cannot simultaneously be both a wife and girlfriend (of the same football player). One would be a wife OR girlfriend.

Wikipedia also mentions the acronym CHAPs: celebrities' husbands and partners. One CHAP would surely be a CHOP, which is also amusing but much less offensive than calling someone a WOG...

4 comments:

The Ridger, FCD said...

Well, Footballers' Wives leads me to believe that one could be the wife of one AND girlfriend of another at the same time...

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the acronym WAGs is only popular because it sounds a lot like SLAGs.

Anonymous said...

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JD (The Engine Room) said...

WAGS also rhymes with the tabloidese words shags, hags and bags, which helps when it comes to headline writing...