[Leica] OT: POSH

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Hello Douglas,
Thank you! :-) It's little things that pop up in the LUG every once in 
awhile that is part of the magic of being here!
One is always learning!
ted
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas M.Sharp" <douglas.sharp@gmx.de>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 2:01 AM
Subject: [Leica] OT: POSH


> Just found this on a quite excellent site 
> http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorp.htm
> see also http://www.m-w.com/help/faq/posh.htm
> One of those where you can spend (waste?) hours just looking back and 
> forth.
> As a fan of old ships I'll stick to the P&O definition.
> Douglas
>
>
>
> Posh
> This is another word with an apocryphal acronymic origin. 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 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 
> postulates that the "swanky" meaning of posh may be a contraction of 
> polish.
>
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