'chaps' is a perfectly correct and usable word in written English.
It is often used as a slang term for men, typically in the UK or other Commonwealth countries. You can also use it to refer to more than one male person in a friendly and/or informal manner. Example sentence: The chaps decided to meet up at the pub for a pint after work.
And yet there's something gloomily philistine about it, something that leaves you with a surprising pang for the days when Tory patricians were allowed to be decent chaps without quite such demands on their electoral palatability.
Madonna ruffled feathers during the Guy Ritchie years by boasting about hunting pheasant: "I like being one of the chaps.
Coulson, because of his links with the Murdoch empire and his tabloid experience, was given the benefit of the doubt, a privilege once reserved by the establishment for chaps of impeccably upper-class background.
To their bewilderment, slightly drunk chaps in green shirts kept weaving up to them and enquiring what exactly was making them so mad.
I mean, what's not to like about Lomborgate, chaps?
It's just 10 chaps from various walks of life who enjoy each other's company – farmers, retired dentists, a chef, an engineer".
But where Bafta has no problem nominating public school chaps like Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch, it rates as something of a shock that it has turned a blind eye to Selma's lead David Oyelowo, a British actor who went to an Islington comprehensive.
I remember my mum being horrified at Christina Aguilera's Dirrrty video – the one where she's wearing those crotchless leather chaps and gyrating in the boxing ring (pretty tame by today's standards), but at the time I couldn't see what was wrong with it.
In a few days, these little chaps will be moved on to a less warm room, to make way, after the room has been cleaned and left for a week to reduce any risk of disease, for the next 1,000 lunches.
These eye-witness accounts just pip Studs Turkel's similar The Good War at the post, with first hand testimony by everyone from Lord Mountbatten to Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, and the poor chaps on the ground who had to do the actual fighting.
No case to answer, say the chaps on the supervisory board.
