Pop Culture dictionary
Cheggs
or Chegg's [chegz]
What does Cheggs mean?
Cheggs is a colloquial name for Chegg, a company which offers digital textbook rentals and academic supports for students.
Where does Cheggs come from?
The California-based Chegg, Inc.was founded in the early 2000s by Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra to provide digital textbook rentals for college students. They also came to offer tutoring, homework assistance, scholarship placement, internship guides, and other student services, including for some high schoolers.
The name Chegg blends chicken and egg, as the founders felt and knew personally how students are trapped in a chicken-and-egg problem—to land a good job after college, one needs experience, but to get that experience, one needs a job. A college education helps, and Chegg sought to play its part by making textbooks more affordable and academic help accessible.
Because Chegg can save students a lot of money, the service caught on quickly. By 2009, students were referring to the company and their services as Cheggs or Chegg’s (books), with some users understandably mistaking Cheggs as the company’s official name.
Examples of Cheggs
Who uses Cheggs?
College students colloquially use Cheggs as a noun or descriptor for its various services (e.g., I got some Cheggs tutoring for Econ). Some may even affectionately personify Cheggs (e.g., I don’t know how I would’ve graduated without Cheggs’ help).
Unrelated is Cheggs, a brand (and another blend) of chocolate eggs, popular at Easter in the UK.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of Cheggs like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of Cheggs that will help our users expand their word mastery.