From: jerryg@jaiser.rain.com (Jerry Gaiser) Subject: POSH
This re-emergence of POSH has caused me to dig into one of the best books (IMNSHO) on the etymology of words, The Browser's Dictionary by John Ciardi.
I quote (of course without permission):
— posh Swanky. Deluxe. [A direct borrowing of the form but not the sense of Romany 'posh', half. Brit. Gypsies commonly, if warily, worked with Brit. rogues. 'Shiv', Romany for "knife," came into Eng. through this association. Similarly 'rum go' is at root 'Rom go', "a Gypsy thing," hence a queer thing. Brit. rogues came to know posh in such compounds as 'posh-houri,' half pence, and 'posh-kooroona,' half crown, so associating it with money, and from XVII to mid XIX 'posh' meant "money" in thieve's cant, the sense then shifting to "swank, fashionable, expensive" ("the good things money can buy")]
NOTE. A pervasive folk etymology renders the term as an acronym of
p(ort) o(out), s(tarboard) h(ome), with ref. to the ideal accomodations on the passage to India by way of the Suez Canal, a packet service provided by the Peninsula and Eastern steamship line. The acronym is said to explain the right placement of one's stateroom for being on the shady or the lee side of the ship. On the east-west passage it is true, the ship being north of the sun, that the acronym will locate the shady side (though time of year will make a substantial difference). The lee side, however, is determined by the monsoon winds, and since they blow into the Asian heartland all summer and out all winter, only the season can determine which side will be sheltered. The earlier dating of 'posh' as glossed above sufficently refutes the ingenious (but too late) acronymic invention. And as a clincher, veterans of the Peninsula and Eastern, questioned about the term, replied that they had never heard it in the acronymic sense. —
Just another data point.
– Jerry Gaiser (jerryg@jaiser.rain.com) (voice) 503-359-4017 Fidonet 1:105/380 (bbs) 503-359-5111 PBBS n7pwf@n7pwf.or.usa.na
.. I read banned books ..