Provenance — where it came from
In the mid-1990s, the loudest language factory in Japan was the Tokyo schoolgirl. Fashion magazines studied her, TV shows interviewed her, and her slang changed faster than adults could take notes.
The masterpiece of the mid-1990s was チョベリバ (choberiba). The recipe: take 超 (chō, “super”), stack it on English “very,” stack that on English “bad,” and compress the whole thing into four light syllables. Something terrible — a failed test, a rainy date — was choberiba. It came with a happy twin, チョベリグ (choberigu): “super very good.”
Television repeated it, adults tried to use it and sounded wrong, and like most schoolgirl slang it died fast — within a few years it already sounded like the past. That is its value here. Say “choberiba” to Japanese speakers today and you are not saying “very bad”; you are saying “the 1990s,” in one word.
Field notes — how it’s used
テスト最悪、チョベリバ〜
tesuto saiaku, choberiba
“The test was awful. Super very bad.”