What it means
Your mate, your bestie, the person you always call when things go sideways. Comes from Afrikaans tjommie and has settled into South African English like it always belonged there. Used for close friends more than random acquaintances, so when someone calls you their chommie it means you are properly in the inner circle. Warm, casual, a little more affectionate than just saying friend.
Usage examples
"My chommie pitched up at my flat with pap and wors after my breakup, now we are watching rugby in our pyjamas like absolute heroes"
"My chommie from the high school of the eastern suburbs of Johannesburg has finally received the offer of the engineering programme of the University of Stellenbosch of the Western Cape province, the family of the Glenhazel community has organised a celebration dinner at the Norwood Hotel of the northern Johannesburg metro for the Friday evening of the second week of the December holidays."
"The chommie of my cousin from the Durban North suburb of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality has invited the entire family of the maternal side to the wedding celebration of the December holiday season at the historic Royal Hotel of the Durban beachfront of the South Beach district, three days of the Indian Ocean of the catering of the local cuisine and the morning swims of the warm waters of the season."
Where it comes from
Chommie is the South African English borrowing from the Afrikaans tjommie, the diminutive of tjom, friend or buddy, attested in the Afrikaans literature of the nineteen-thirties and forties in the works of writers like Mikro and Hennie Aucamp. The Afrikaans form derives from the Cape Dutch tjom of the eighteen-hundreds, a phonetic variation of the older Dutch maatje, little mate. The English-speaking communities of Johannesburg and Cape Town absorbed the Afrikaans diminutive during the nineteen-fifties and sixties of the apartheid era, when the parallel English and Afrikaans school systems shared playground vocabulary, and chommie has remained in use across both language communities of the new South African democracy after the end of apartheid in nineteen-ninety-four.
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