[Leica] OT: POSH

[douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas M.Sharp)]

There was a good "Matt" cartoon in the "Daily Telegraph" a while back,
someone showing their friends a photo-album of an earlier Aurora cruise where
there was an outbreak of something nasty on board,
the caption " and this is us throwing up at the Captains table".

Which reminds me of the Yorkshireman on a cruise opening the invitation to
dinner at the Captains Table: " Ee luv, ah paid so much fer this trip, ahl be
bu--ered if ahm ayten wit crew to-neet"
Douglas

Gerry Walden wrote:

> You may be amused by the suggested acronyms circulating here in
> Southampton following the cancellation of the world cruise by P&Os
> prestige cruise ship Aurora due to engine failure (at a cost of around
> $50M - some cabins were around $77,000 each). The suggestions are
> 'Portsmouth Out Southampton Home' (look at a map) following abortive
> attempts to get started, and 'Aurora - Always Under Repair, Only Rarely
> Abroad'! There is never a dull day in the world of shipping.
> 
> If you ever visit Southampton I can recommend the POSH Indian Restaurant
> decorated as a First Class Lounge on a cruise liner.
> 
> Gerry
> 
> Gerry Walden LRPS
> www.gwpics.com <http://www.gwpics.com> 
> Tel: +44 (0)23 8046 3076
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+gwpics=lycos.co.uk@leica-users.org
> [mailto:lug-bounces+gwpics=lycos.co.uk@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
> Douglas M.Sharp
> Sent: 23 January 2005 10:01
> To: Leica Users Group
> 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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