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The legend has become widely circulated that posh is an acronym formed from the initial letters of port out, starboard home, an allusion to the fact that wealthy passengers could afford the more expensive cabins on the port side of the ships going out to India, and on the starboard side returning to the United Kingdom, which kept them out of the heat of the sun. Pleasant as this story is, it has never been substantiated. Another possibility is that posh may be the same word as the now obsolete posh "dandy, swell," a slang term current around the end of the 19th century. This too is of unknown origin, but it has been linked with the still earlier 19th-century slang term posh "halfpenny," hence broadly "money," which may have come ultimately from Romany posh "half."
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