Cheeky Nando's

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About

"Cheeky Nando's" is a British expression typically used on social media to describe a quality dining experience at the South African restaurant chain Nando's. In late 2014, the phrase began trending in captions of selfie photographs featuring subjects making an "A-OK" hand signal.

Origin

The British slang term "cheeky" is often used to describe someone who is exhibiting charming or irreverent behavior. The exact origin of the phrase "cheeky Nando's" is unclear. The earliest known use was featured in the title of a hip hop track uploaded by SoundCloud user Buzy Ray on November 25th, 2011 (shown below).

Spread

On September 26th, 2012, Flickr^[6] user Finn Harries posted a photograph of himself pointing to a plate a food with the caption "having an exceptionally cheeky Nandos." On January 19th, 2014, Twitter user Marcus Butler posted a tweet about "cheeky Nandos," gaining over 3,400 favorites and 820 retweets over the next two years (shown below).

On October 26th, 2014, Twitter user @LukeLiddle^[3] posted a photograph of the singer Morrissey making an "A-OK" hand sign while performing on stage, accompanied by the tweet "When your Nandos is extra cheeky" (shown below).

On December 21st, 2014, Urban Dictionary^[1] user CheekiPeriPeri submitted an entry for "Cheeky Nandos," associating the phrase with men who wear "converse/flip flops", "skin-tight pants," "skimply composed vests/T-shirts" and an "orgy of gel." On March 27th, 2015, Urban Dictionary^[2] user Rekt92 submitted another entry for "cheeky nandos," defining it as a phrase used by "fuckboys" on social media. On May 9th, Tumblr user ahrned^[7] reblogged a post by user chavvesty explaining the meaning of "cheeky Nandos," gathering upwards of 58,300 notes in the next 72 hours (shown below).

On May 12th, BuzzFeed^[4]^[5] published a listicle highlighting examples of "cheeky Nando's" tweets, along with a separate article about Americans confused by the expression. In the coming days, several other news sites published articles about American's confusion with the phrase, including Cosmopolitan,^[8] The Irish Examiner^[9] and Vpoint News.^[10]