Chic means stylish in a quiet, confident way. A chic little restaurant, effortlessly chic, very chic.
The restraint is essential: chic is not the same as fashionable or expensive, and something loud cannot be chic. It is pronounced sheek. As a noun it means that quality: Parisian chic. Shabby chic is a decorating style of deliberately worn furniture, and radical chic is a scornful phrase for fashionable political sympathy. Note that chic is one of the few French adjectives English uses without any anglicised alternative.
1adjectivechicStylish in a quiet, confident way.
“She always looks chic in a simple black dress and pearls.”
chic is a quality of restrained style.
French chic may come from a German word meaning skill or aptitude. It arrived in English in the nineteenth century and has never acquired an English equivalent, which is itself a comment on the concept.
Proto-Indo-European
*skek-
French
chic — elegant
English, today
chic
Built 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA