Origin of the word POSH!

[Dave Potts]

My mate reckons the word 'posh' originated with the East India Company stamping the word on the baggage of First Class passengers, and that it stood for 'Port Out, Starboard Home', the idea being that the First Class passengers got sunshine all the time on their passage to India and the plebs like you and sat in the dark like mushrooms or got to look at some drunken sailor's hairy backside. Can anyone lend any credibility to this assertion or shall I just go ahead and give him a dead arm?

[kags]

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwo
rdorigins/posh?view=uk

[bernardo]

kags is right - the "Port Out Starboard Home" story is a myth. The real origin of the word "posh" is believed to be an alternative word for a dandy. Er... I'm not sure why you want to give your friend a dead arm? Is it some sort of bet?

[BenDToy]

Wouldn't port side, travelling to India, face North and the sun would generally be to the south? Bit of a flaw in the argument I suspect......unless I have got my ports and starboards mixed up again! The myth (which it is) I suspect related to voyages to the west eg America, West Indies etc.

[bernardo]

BenDToy - well spotted - you are correct but the error is in Dave's question. The logic of the "Port Out Starboard Home" myth is that the rich people and bloated plutocratic slave-driving capitalist bourgeois imperialists would want to be in the cool shade in the side away from the sun, and the oppressed peasants, toilers, workers and downtrodden masses would have to suffer being in the swealtering sweaty hot sun.

By the way, I remember which is which out of "port and "starboard" by the length of the words - port is left; right is starboard; port is shorter than starboard, left is shorter than right.

[Quizmonster]

As others have already said, the voyage to India concept is a myth. The very first time the word appeared in print, meaning 'grand/swell' was in 1918, having earlier appeared as 'push' - with a "u" - in a P G Wodehouse story in 1903, also meaning 'grand'.

As British officials and soldiers with wives and families had been sailing to and fro India for almost three centuries by then, it's clearly too late for the 'port out' explanation to have any substance. It was also rejected in the 'Mariners' Mirror' decades ago and presumably sailors of all people would have known. Finally, the steamship company, P & O, themselves deny the phrase ever existed!

[jenstar]

Yes, give him a dead arm. If his glib repetition of this oft-debunked old chestnut isn't justification enough, then I don't know what is.

[Dave Potts]

Dead arm duly administered - thanks for the observations :o)

[Bert]

Before the Suez Canal was built, wouldn't most of the journey have been done in a more-or-less southerly direction as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and then in a more-or-less northerly direction from there to India? So the benefits of being on the port or starboard side of the ship would have been marginal at best. By the way, the rule about length of words also works for the colours shown by ships - port is red, starboard is green.