Posh……..a compliment or an insult?

I never came across the word posh until I came to the UK. I associate it with a certain type of accent. If someone speaks with a public school accent or speaks as if she has a plum in her mouth and address her parents as mummy and daddy or mama and papa, I might say ‘Oh she sounds posh’.

There are no posh accents in my country of origin in the Far East. People use standard English ie, the Queen’s English in professional settings. Outside of this, they revert back to the informal, colloquial English which sounds quite gibberish and not very intelligent since its English but with words of the local languages and dialects thrown into it.

So, not posh at all.

Sloane rangers was a phrase I remember at around Diana's era.

Having done a bit of light research, I have discovered that Elvis Presley recorded a song "High-heel Sneakers" which was released in 1964. As 'Sneakers' is the name still given to what are now called 'Trainers' in the UK, they must have been around then. Though, if my memory serves me right, they were called 'Sneakers' in the UK back then.

Incidentally I had a pair of 'Basketball Boots' back in the 1960s. They were made of canvas, had high tops, laces and had soft soles. I believe these are still around now and are usually made by 'Converse'.

I certainly wore trainers in the 70s.

PS we definitely had trainers in 1980. I think they were called sneakers. They weren't at all clompy, more like plimsolls.

Sort of "preppy".

I think the twin sets I nean were revived by the posh girls around 1980 when I was at uni. A bit like the Diana/Sloane Square look with ruffled collar shirts. The tartan and tweed skirs didn't match the top half though like I assume they did in 1960? I'll look for a picture, but I'm out now until after lunch.

Allira

Twin sets were popular in the early to mid-60s for some reason. I remember my then boyfriend buying me a lovely set one Christmas.

Perhaps because winters were cold and there was no central heating.
I didn't have any pearls, though!

Yes, I remember those during that era. It was at least the mid 60s before we had central heating at home. I never had an actual twin set, but my going-out winter outfit for at least a year (I had hardly any non-school clothes, had to buy them myself) was a maroon, short-sleeved thin wool jumper (M&S) with a grey mini skirt.
Another year it was a dark green sweater dress, probably from Dorothy Perkins.

Twin sets were popular in the early to mid-60s for some reason. I remember my then boyfriend buying me a lovely set one Christmas.

Perhaps because winters were cold and there was no central heating.
I didn't have any pearls, though!

escaped

I was badly mannered at university then, because I called the majority of the female students at my college "posh". They turned up in twinsets and pearls, while I wore old jeans and trainers. They rented flats in South Kensington, I went home each night to grimy East London.
My tutor was a snob too, she said my French accent wasn't great, (I'd been to school in Brittany as a child where the dialect is quite different), and then she had the cheek to add, "not that your English one (accent) is much better either"!

I am struggling to work out when and where you were at university. My recollection is that by the time jeans and trainers became fashionable, twinsets and pearls were long gone, even among the Kensington set who wore (guess what?) jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts etc. I don't recollect anyone, even me, wearing trainers when I was a teenager during the 1960s.

I too, like millions of others, come from East London.

Non posh Ann.
I expect people just called her "the other one".

When I was made redundant from a good job, I started working on the local hospital reception desk. There were two receptionists called Ann so they decided to call me Posh Ann. I didn't think of it as an insult but I did wonder what the other Ann thought!

No sneering needed, I said it truthfully in a self deprecatory manner. If anything, being the "un-posh" odd one out made me quite popular! Those posh girls were rebels underneath! 🙊

escaped

I was badly mannered at university then, because I called the majority of the female students at my college "posh". They turned up in twinsets and pearls, while I wore old jeans and trainers. They rented flats in South Kensington, I went home each night to grimy East London.
My tutor was a snob too, she said my French accent wasn't great, (I'd been to school in Brittany as a child where the dialect is quite different), and then she had the cheek to add, "not that your English one (accent) is much better either"!

I suppose it depends on whether you sneered, which is what I was referring to.

😯
Uncalled for comments!

My mother used to pull me up for using local vernacular, not that we were posh, and she herself had a slight accent but she had lived in various areas of England and overseas.

I remember using words like 'munna' and 'inna' which I must have picked up from school friends.
Then at High School we had elocution lessons and she told me I sounded 'too posh' 😁

I was badly mannered at university then, because I called the majority of the female students at my college "posh". They turned up in twinsets and pearls, while I wore old jeans and trainers. They rented flats in South Kensington, I went home each night to grimy East London.
My tutor was a snob too, she said my French accent wasn't great, (I'd been to school in Brittany as a child where the dialect is quite different), and then she had the cheek to add, "not that your English one (accent) is much better either"!

You'd think university students might be a bit better mannered, really.

Our dd2 was sneered at for being ‘posh’ by some fellow students* when she started at Newcastle University - because she came from outer London and her accent was RP, and I don’t mean the ‘cut glass’ version of RP, just ‘normal’.

*who were northern, but not Geordies.

I quite often was asked to set the questions and conduct the quiz for my local pub's Quiz Night and enjoyed doing so. For two years running, I was asked to do the Christmas quiz. I think the quizzes were 20 questions long, so it was quite tricky to come up with with the second Christmas quiz with no duplication and without being smarty pants esoteric.

In November, a year later, my ageing mother was seriously ill in hospital and I visited her every evening. My husband and I went to the pub once we got home and the lovely landlady said to me, "We took a vote about who should do the Christmas quiz and everyone said THE LADY WITH THE POSH VOICE. Apparently, that was me.

P.s. I did write the questions for the quiz and conducted it and didn't duplicate or become too obscure. But I remained the lady with the posh voice. I didn't do a fourth Christmas quiz. Incidentally, my mother recovered and lived a few years longer.

For the last six years I’ve looked after a man (we’ll call him Fred) who has a learning disability and whose dysfunctional childhood was actually somewhat less awful than my own. Many, many times I’ve mentioned to him that I was brought up in council housing and that we were a very poor family, but he has steadfastly refused to believe it. Then when he was visiting me recently I introduced him to my younger brother and they got on like a house on fire (brother used to work with learning disabled adults), chatting and laughing together. Fred asked my brother what it was like living with me when we were children and was absolutely astonished when my brother explained we were an extremely poor family and used to swap clothes (first up was best dressed) and scavenge food when we were little.

“But, but, how come you’re both so posh then?” He wanted to know. And the answer of course is that ‘posh’ is a subjective term.

Well, that’s my two penn’orth anyway. 😂

Im 72. I was born in Essex. Both my parents were Geordies. When ever I went to Northumberland to visit my cousins as a child, all their friends said I talked POSH. I didn't, I had a slight Cockney accent but it was London so to them it was posh.

'Port out, starboard home' was based on travel by boat to India etc. It meant you were rich enough to pay for cabins on the shady side of the boat. This made a difference on a long journey.

I would never associate that word as an insult. To me it means refined, elegant or upper class. Even though we live in a supposedly classless society, there are certain things, or ways of doing things that denote higher society but not necessarily achieved with more money.

For instance, a posh part of town may not necessarily be the wealthiest part of town. Large well kept lawns with elegant black cars compared to glass and cement mansions with flashy red sportscars.

JaneJudge

like butter knives and desert wine

How about caviare spreaders? A set of 6 were actually on a wedding present list we once received - mother of pearl handles, £45 per knife, and this was over 20 years ago! I asked the wedding list person at the shop (Harrods, naturally 😂) whether anyone ever actually bought the things. He was laughing as much as I was!

He was Irish, hollysteers
That beautiful accent...