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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.
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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 ..