"posh"
(Word Origins)"Posh" (probably) does NOT stand for "port out, starboard home". MWCD10, p. 27a, says, "our editors frequently have to explain to correspondents that the dictionary fails to state that the origin of _posh_ is in the initial letters of the phrase 'port out, starboard home' -- supposedly a shipping term for the cooler accommodations on steamships plying between Britain and India from the mid-nineteenth century on -- not because the story is unknown to us but because no evidence to support it has yet been produced. Some evidence exists that casts strong doubt on it; the word is not known earlier than 1918 (in a source unrelated to shipping), and the acronymic explanation does not appear until 1935." A tenable theory is that "posh" meant "halfpenny" (from Romany _posh_ "half") and then "money" before acquiring its present meaning. Or it may come from the slang "pot" (= "big", "a person of importance"). Or it may be a contraction of "polished". I got e-mail from someone whose grandmother claimed to have seen steamship tickets with "P.O.S.H." overprinted. And William Safire's _I Stand Corrected_ (Times, 1984, ISBN 0-8129-01097-4) quotes a letter from an Ellen Thackara of Switzerland: "When I lived in the Orient the P.&O. (Pacific [sic] and Orient) Line out of London _did_ put beside the names of important people 'POSH', so they would have the cooler side of the ship." (The P&O is actually the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company; it's not clear whether the mistake is Thackara's or Safire's.) But to convince us, you'll have to *find* one of these tickets and send a copy to Merriam-Webster.
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