Caroline Astor and her guests at a 1902 ball. Black and white drawing of an elegantly dressed and bejeweled woman surrounded by other well-dressed women and men.
6 April 2022
The origin of posh is not known for certain, but there are two likely sources. The word has two meanings, and it may be two distinct words with different etymologies. Posh can mean money, and more specifically a halfpenny or other low-denomination coin. But it can also be an adjective meaning stylish, luxurious, or even pretentious.
One possible origin is that posh comes from the Angloromani posh or Welsh Romani påš, meaning half. The monetary link comes in with the terms posh-hórri or påš xåra, meaning a half-penny. The hórri or xā̊ra is a borrowing from the German heller or haler, the name of a low-denomination coin of Central Europe. (Cf. dollar)
The other possible origin is that it is from the Urdu safed-pōš, safed = white and pōš = covering, which means dressed in white, well-dressed, and affluent. Personally, I favor the idea that the monetary sense comes from the Romani word, while the stylish sense comes from the Urdu, likely a transfer via the British military occupying India.
The word, however, first appears as a fictional surname or nickname in early nineteenth-century literature. This use of posh as a name, however, may be unrelated to the later slang uses. But the earliest use I’ve found, in George Colman’s 1801 play The Poor Gentleman, uses the name in a passage that makes an oblique reference to a stylishly dressed man, although the person named Posh is not that stylish person:
Thank you, good sir, I owe you one.—Churchwarden Posh, of our town, being ill of indigestion, from eating three pounds of measly pork at a Vestry dinner, I was making up a cathartick for the patient, when who should strut into the shop but Lieutenant Grains, the Brewer—sleek as a dray-horse—in a smart scarlet jacket, tastily turn’d up with a rhubarb-colour’d lapelle.
We get the sense of posh meaning money a few decades later. It is recorded in the court proceedings of the Old Bailey in London, during the trial of a certain Charles Wells for theft on 8 July 1830:
JOSEPH PLUMMER. I have known the prisoner some time. On Monday evening, the 7th of June, I went with the Policeman—I had heard of the robbery: on the Tuesday afternoon, about twelve o'clock, I went by myself into old Fleet-market, and met the prisoner: I said, "Charley, have you been home yet?" he said Yes; I said, "You have stolen your master's watch?" he said, "Go on with you;" I asked if he had pawned the watch, and if he had, to give me the ticket—he said he had not pawned it, but sold it, but he had not got the posh (which means money) yet; I wished him to come home with me—he would not; I then told him the Policemen were after him, and if he would come home with me, and give his master his property, he would not be hurt; but if not, his master said he would prosecute him; he said it was a lie—I told him his mother was fretting about him; he said, "Tell my mother not to fret, for I am going out of town, and shall not see her any more;" I asked if he was going to give me any thing to drink; he said, "Don't I tell you I have not got the posh yet;" I said, "Well, Charley, when shall I see you again?" he said, "You won't see me any more, for I am going out of town;" he said, "Good bye Joe;" I said, "Good bye Charley;" that is all I recollect.
Cross-examined. Q. You understand what posh means very well? A. Yes; I live with my parents; I was never turned out of doors by my mother for bad behaviour; I have been in the workhouse, and left there suddenly—I was never in the Penitentiary, nor in custody.
The association of posh with style comes by the end of the nineteenth century. Barrère and Leland’s 1890 slang dictionary records the monetary sense, but adds that it also means a dandy, or well-dressed man. (This dictionary gets part of the etymology wrong, i.e., the association with hāro or copper.) Barrère and Leland seem to think the dandy sense is from the same root, but this may not be correct:
Posh (society), modern term for money, originally used for a halfpenny or small coin. From the gypsy pash or posh, a half. In Romany poshero, the affix ero being corrupted from hāro, copper, i.e., a copper or a penny. Posh an’ posh, half and half, applied to those who are of mixed blood, or half gypsy. Also a dandy.
The use of posh as an adjective meaning stylish appears in the early twentieth century. Its first recorded use may be in a P.G. Wodehouse short story, L’Affaire Uncle John. This epistolary story was first published in Public School Magazine in 1901, but the word posh does not appear in this initial edition. The passage in question appears in a letter from a schoolboy to his father:
He kept asking leading questions about pocket-money and holidays, and wanted to know if my master allowed me to walk in the streets in that waistcoat—a remark which cut me to the quick, “that waistcoat” being quite the most stylish thing of the sort in Cambridge.
The word stylish was changed to push in a 1903 edition of the story. Despite the different spelling, it is very likely that posh was intended. The different spelling could have arisen because: the spelling of the slang term had not yet standardized; Wodehouse spelled it incorrectly; or it’s a hypercorrection by the editor or printer. Later editions have emended it to posh. Similarly, the fact that posh does not appear at all in the 1901 edition may be due to the editor determining it was too unfamiliar, or perhaps Wodehouse had not yet learned the word in 1901 but by 1903 had determined it was just the thing for this story—which also fits the idea that he misspelled a word he had only heard and not read. We just don’t know.
But we see an unambiguous use of posh in E. Charles Vivian’s 1914 The British Army from Within:
The cavalryman, far more than the infantryman, makes a point of wearing “posh” clothing on every possible occasion—"posh” being a term used to designate superior clothing, or articles of attire other than those issued by and strictly conforming to the regulations. For walking out in town, a business commonly known as “square-pushing,” the cavalryman who fancies himself will be found in superfine cloth overalls, wearing nickel spurs instead of the regulation steel pair, and with light, thin-soled boots instead of the Wellingtons with which he is issued. It is a commonplace among the infantry that a cavalryman spends half his pay and more on “posh” clothing, but probably the accusation is a little unjust.
The fact that by 1914 posh was an established slang term in the British Army lends credence to the idea that the stylish sense of the word is from Urdu, transferred to English by occupying troops.
Of course, we can’t leave the discussion of posh without touching on the false acronymic origin. Popular etymology has it that the word 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. The sense of the term meaning swank, elegant, or fashionable supposedly sprang from this use. While it is an excellent story, no tickets with posh stamped on them have ever been found and company records reveal no sign of the phrase. And this explanation doesn’t even appear until 1932, well after posh was established in the language. It is clear that this explanation was invented after the fact to explain the word
Sources:
Angloromani Dictionary, Romani Linguistics and Romani Language Projects, University of Manchester,
Barrère, Albert and Charles G. Leland. A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, vol. 2 of 2. London: Ballantyne Press, 1890, 146. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Charles Wells. Theft: Theft from a Specified Place. 8th July 1830.” Old Bailey Proceedings Online.
Colman, George, the Younger. The Poor Gentleman (1801). London: Longman and Rees, 1802, 1.2, 16. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. posh, n.1, posh, n.2, posh, adj.
Grosvenor, Lady Arthur (née Helen Sheffield), “Whiter’s ‘Lingua Cingariana.’” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, New Series, 2.2, October 1908, 161–79 at 164. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2006, posh, adj. and n.4, posh, n.1, posh, n.3, posh, v.
Taylor-Blake, Bonnie. “Re: [ADS-L] Earlier Instance of Etymological Myth for ‘Posh.’” ADS-L, 27 March 2022.
Tréguer, Pascal. “The Probable Origin of the Word ‘Posh’” Wordhistories.net, 22 November 2016.
Vivian, E. Charles. The British Army from Within. New York: George H. Doran, 1914, 82. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Wodehouse, P.G. “L’Affaire Uncle John (A Story in Letters).” Public School Magazine, 8, 1901, 152. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Unknown artist, 1902. Public domain image.