42 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
42 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
From: jerryg@jaiser.rain.com (Jerry Gaiser)
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Subject: POSH
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This re-emergence of POSH has caused me to dig into one of the best books
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(IMNSHO) on the etymology of words, The Browser's Dictionary by John Ciardi.
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I quote (of course without permission):
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---
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posh Swanky. Deluxe. [A direct borrowing of the form but not the sense of
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Romany 'posh', half. Brit. Gypsies commonly, if warily, worked with Brit.
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rogues. 'Shiv', Romany for "knife," came into Eng. through this association.
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Similarly 'rum go' is at root 'Rom go', "a Gypsy thing," hence a queer thing.
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Brit. rogues came to know posh in such compounds as 'posh-houri,' half pence,
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and 'posh-kooroona,' half crown, so associating it with money, and from
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XVII to mid XIX 'posh' meant "money" in thieve's cant, the sense then
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shifting to "swank, fashionable, expensive" ("the good things money can
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buy")]
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NOTE. A pervasive folk etymology renders the term as an acronym of
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p(ort) o(out), s(tarboard) h(ome), with ref. to the ideal accomodations
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on the passage to India by way of the Suez Canal, a packet service provided
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by the Peninsula and Eastern steamship line. The acronym is said to explain
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the right placement of one's stateroom for being on the shady or the lee
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side of the ship. On the east-west passage it is true, the ship being north
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of the sun, that the acronym will locate the shady side (though time of year
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will make a substantial difference). The lee side, however, is determined
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by the monsoon winds, and since they blow into the Asian heartland all
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summer and out all winter, only the season can determine which side will be
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sheltered. The earlier dating of 'posh' as glossed above sufficently refutes
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the ingenious (but too late) acronymic invention. And as a clincher, veterans
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of the Peninsula and Eastern, questioned about the term, replied that they
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had never heard it in the acronymic sense.
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---
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Just another data point.
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--
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Jerry Gaiser (jerryg@jaiser.rain.com) (voice) 503-359-4017
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Fidonet 1:105/380 (bbs) 503-359-5111
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PBBS n7pwf@n7pwf.or.usa.na
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.. I read banned books ..
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