herbert

nouncommon in dialogue

United Kingdom//ˈhɜːbət//
United States//ˈhɝbɚt//

A working-class youth, especially male.

noun

1
slangA working-class youth, especially male.
It was the Ulster Annual Jamboree. For weeks past, hundreds of spotty-faced herberts, with yodelling voices and chin fuzz, had tied three million knots, started ten thousand twig fires, and completed six hundred leaf fires; perfect training for round about 3000BC but bloody useless in the twentieth century.
[…] everything was busy now with the usual mix of herberts, and because this was Brunel University there was a lot of students, the sort who wouldn't normally go see a punk band […]
Because of my appearance, I was accosted by a couple of spotty herberts on the way […]
I was a proto-hippy in '66 - '67 and by about August '67 the bandwagon jumpers, the media and all manner of assorted herberts had turned up to spoil everything.
2
slangA foolish or contemptible person, especially male.
For quotations using this term, see Citations:herbert.

Etymology

* (working-class youth): From the name Herbert. The term was popularised by the punk movement but predates it.

Forms

plural: herberts

herb · A plant whose stem is not woody and does not persist beyond…Herb · A diminutive of the male given name Herbert.herbal · Made from or with herbs.

herbert · A working-class youth, especially male.

Herbert · A male given name from the Germanic languages, in modern use…Herbie · A diminutive of the male given name Herbert.Hercules · The Roman name for the Greek divine hero Heracles, who was…

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.