File under “Posh!? Again!? Oh No!”: Oh, definitely yes, once again and ad infinitum, you don’t know the origin of the word posh.
If you’ve been a language-lover for any length of time, you’ve likely encountered suggested origins of the word posh. And any tome that spends any moment of time whatsoever discrediting false etymologies simply must address the subject. It’s basic, it’s fundamental. Kind of like lifting weights, doing stretches, and taking batting
practice before the big game. Posh is the poster child of bad etymology. Please donate your pennies to the Campaign Against Impoverished Etymology (it’s not the source of an acronym—don’t try).
Better yet, please donate your half-pennies, and I’ll explain why in a moment.
First, the batting practice. Toss the “Port Out Starboard Home” acronym story into the air and I’ll smash it with my Louisville Slugger. Once upon a time, early in a century known as the nineteenth, rich people sailing from England bought first-class tickets that guaranteed cabins on the cooler, afternoon-shaded port side of India-bound ships, and the afternoon-shaded starboard side when England-bound. (I suspect they slept in the middle of the ship at night.) No evidence physical or reliably anecdotal confirms that such a first-class designation existed. What’s more, posh as acronym is in almost certain violation of “Rule i of Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle,” and in absolute violation of “Rule 4 of Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle, Corollary A” (see page 57). Hugh Rawson in Devious Derivations reports an alternate explanation: the “waggishly suggested Port Out Sherry Home,” which even if we didn’t know it as a jest, would violate “Rule 2 of Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle.”
OK, that was easy. Any language-loving curmudgeon can get his whacks in on such an easy target. But where does the word really come from? Any ideas? I offer a penny for your thoughts. But because I’m a cheap bastard, let’s make it a half-penny for your thoughts. In A Browser’s Dictionary, John Ciardi writes that “British Gypsies commonly, if warily, worked with British rogues [who] came to know posh in such compounds as posh-houri, half pence, and posh- kooroona, half crown, so associating it with money.” It would seem
6o
Bill Brohaugh
that those were obviously economically different times, when the thought of having a half penny meant you were living the good life, all posh and well-to-do. Money? He has half-pennies to bum! But the connection becomes clearer when considering the theory that the pas xara, shortened to be pronounced “posh,” took figurative meaning as money, or wealth, just as the simple word coin has done.
There might be another clue to posh in half-pennies, or as some Brits might say, “ha-pennies,” swallowing a couple of letters, including pas of the word pas, or “half of the word half,” to translate from the native Romani. Such consonant swallowing (we might say “swa’ing”) perhaps led to the word polished being pronounced poshed, with the D being absorbed when following the word with one that begins with a consonant, a theory forwarded by J.P. Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University Chicago.
Any way you look at it, the origin of posh remains in dispute— all except for the nautical acronym fairy tale. So if someone tells you that story, reply “bosh!,” a word that was not constructed from Bullshit Out, Silly History.