Posh

[ithildin]

I never knew this:

In the days when the only way to India from Great Britain was by sea, it was customary for wealthy passengers to carefully choose to book cabins on the cool side of the ship - port out, starboard home, hence the acronym posh.

I'm eternally delighted by these sorts of discoveries :)

Found here at Nautical Origins of Common Words and Phrases Chock full of good stuff!

Comments

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a myth, what's called a "folk etymology," wherein people believe the etymology of a word to be something it's not.

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970415

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Well darn.

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Look at the bright side--it's fun to know about folk etymologies! Entertain your friends and family with etymologies of words that aren't true!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

This is true! The bright side it is :)

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

This is actually a common etymological "urban legend" or reverse etymology. From WordOrigins.org:

Posh
This is another word with an apocryphal acronymic origin (http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorp.htm#). Popular etymology has it that posh is an acronym for Port Out, Starboard Home. Supposedly, this acronym was printed on first-class tickets issued by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company going from England to India. The port side on the trip out would have the coolest cabins (or alternately the cabins with the best view). The same would be true of the starboard cabins on the return trip. From this origin, sprang the usage of the term meaning swank, elegant, or fashionable. Unfortunately for this excellent story, no tickets with Posh stamped on them have been found and company records reveal no sign of the phrase.

The earliest recorded use of posh to mean swank is from the 25 September 1918 issue of the British humor magazine Punch. In 1903, P.G. Wodehouse in Tales of St. Austin's used push to mean fashionable. Whether this was a printer's error or Wodehouse actually meant to use push is unknown (several later editors "corrected" this to read posh). In contrast, according to Merriam Webster (http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorp.htm#)the earliest claim to the acronymic origin dates to 17 October 1935 in the London Times Literary Supplement, where it is claimed to be of American origin. The earliest association with the P&O dates to two years later, almost twenty years after the word's usage was established.

Posh dates back to at least 1867 in the sense of meaning a dandy or fop. The best guess as to its origin is that it derives from Romani, the language of the Rom (commonly known as Gypsies). In Romani, posh means half and is used in monetary terms like posh-houri or half-pence, and posh-kooroona meaning half-crown. The progression from money to a fancy dresser to swank is logical, if undocumented. Alternatively, Partridge (http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorp.htm#) postulates that the "swanky" meaning of posh may be a contraction of polish.