What do you consider posh?

[Fearlesssloth]

Is posh subjective/relative do you think or is there a universally agreed upon definition? I mean I guess everyone would say the royal family is posh right?! A work acquaintance called me posh today when I told her the street I live on and it made me think god if she thinks I’m posh where does she live?! Quite amusing as I’ve never been called posh before and the street I live on is mainly small 3-bed semis, mix of council and privately owned but not what I’d call posh, just not a council estate

Certainly those people some are describing as 'posh' would never use that word about themselves. I would probably use the term 'top drawer' instead. Traits which those people have include:- speaking impeccable English and using correct grammar, exemplary manners, knowing the etiquette for a hundred different social situations, being able to talk to anyone about anything and sound as if they know what they are talking about, definitely a private education, 'old money' used for upkeep of property and financing children's education, and so on.

I use a soup spoon for my overnight gluten free oats with goji berries. So I must be very posh!

I recall chatting to a work colleague about someone who she considered very posh. Their posh friend had gone to the local comprehensive and her parents rented their family home from my grandparents, she'd acquired airs and graces, a posh accent, married well and has kids at top private boarding schools. She is very different to the rest of her family.

It bemused me how she considered her friend very posh, and these days this person looks and sounds the part, and I'd class her as posh too. This work colleague never said anything about me being posh, although I was privately educated and grew up in a country hall with fancy holidays and lifestyle. My brother inherits the farms and houses though. My inheritance I've been told is circa 500k (tied in a trust).

I was bullied at school and had a difficult relationship with my mum. I found happiness with middle class friends and husband I met at uni. My husband commented recently that 30 years after he met me my accent has gone. Occasionally people pick up on it though, and make comments. I'm always taken aback as it feels like another life.

Posh is subjective, and relative to how the speaker sees themselves a bit. I’ve been called posh because I grew up in an expensive part of my city, and now live in an expensive part of another area. It’s not a word I would use about myself, I’m bog standard middle class, lol.

For heaven’s sake, @Winderwall — the upper class are absolutely snobbish about people below them on the class ladder. If you don’t notice it, it’s because you don’t recognise the codes. Wealth is a separate thing to social class. Some UC people are incredibly wealthy, just as it’s perfectly possibly to be a multimillionaire and WC. If you own half of Kent, and home is a Palladian pile with a park designed by Capability Brown, or even a delightful little manor in the Cotswolds, you don’t have to be obvious about your class status. The people who need to know know. And that Palladian pile was the bling of its day, as were those family heirloom tiaras they keep in a bank vault or flogged years ago to repair the roof when Daddy got stuck with death duties— they’re just older than today’s nouveau riche rocks and footballer McMansions. Of course they don’t holiday in Dubai. Holidaying there is a class marker.

Posh is all relative really. A casual comment ooh thats posh doesnt really mean youre posh but just doing somethng fancy or living in a nice house, have a nice car etc.
Genuine posh is landed gentry, living in a country "pile" with acres of land, stables and horses, playing polo, kids go to boarding school, have staff, have oil paintings of ancestors , family heirlooms and jewels

Allowing your children to looks scruffy in old ill-fitting clothes but it has to have a certain look it’s not just any old scruffiness

Originally nearly said by Baron Jopling about Michael Heseltine, no? I didn't know Julian Fellows had pinched that little gem! 😂

I don't think Julian F is much of an originator.

Said by the dreadful Alan Clark MP

The one whose wife described someone as 'below stairs'

They should watch the documentary on Tyson Fury so 😂

🤣 Same.

“Very lower middle class”

So working class?

There was a chap on dragon’s den last night in a checked shirt with a knitted tank top over the top. He went to school in Taunton (the boarding school, one assumes, not the local comp) and he was terribly posh. Steven Bartlett asked him where he was from because of his accent which I thought was a bit odd as clearly he was just posh and it wasn’t remotely a regional accent (but then Steven is from Plymouth, which is most definitely not posh, so maybe he just hadn’t met anyone with old skool boarding accents before)

I went to a grammar school. Posh as f*ck.

Agree! I have a posh chum who reckons the moment UK attacks Iran directly, we are all 'farked'.

What's posh: tartare sauce in your fish finger sandwich.

But you can still get away with tomato sauce, if it's from a proper glass bottle, not a plastic squeezy one.

If someone thinks they're posh, or tells you they're posh, they are not.

Yes- but he was quoting Jopling. I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone remotely smart being called Alan! 😂

DH and I are not posh but through his work we know some very posh people.

Some of the things that marked them out as different to us was one (charming) young man who, out of choice, wore his grandads old dinner suit because it was so much better quality than anything you can buy in the shops nowadays.

When they were younger they didn't buy property or rent but lived in cottages on family estates or the family pied a terre in London. When they eventually bought they would skip the flat/starter house and a mortgage but buy somewhere larger outright with an inheritance or trust fund.

I remember being out with a very posh girl I worked with and saying I couldn't go out for dinner as I only had a few ££ to last me until payday. she was amazed and said "why don't you ask your parents to send you some money?' She obviously had no concept of parents not having wads of spare cash to dish out - or of living independently.

Absolutely not.
There is none so class-conscious as the lower-lower-middle class, because they know that they must at all costs differentiate themselves from the working class.
Nobody else cares as much as they do.

Of course posh is relative. I have returned to live in the area where I grew up. I left at 18. got an education, married 'well' to someone who also got an education and earned very well. The area of SW London where we lived we were just ordinary middle class. Now we're back where we're from with assets and smoothed out accents we are considered 'posh'. Yet we both went to comps, as did our children. Although we all went to top universities - again a strange 'posh' signifier, rather than one which demonstrates plain old hard work.

I rather resent it tbh. We are not posh; we simply worked hard academically and landed in jobs which paid well and contributed to our cultural capital. I feel the label is used as an insult, to tell me I left my origins behind

100% relative. Really depends who says it lol.
Not being born in the UK and coming here later in life, I thought one would use the word posh for 'old money'. And by old money I mean well mannered educated individuals with generational wealth and not a random person dressing 'old money' as an Instagram trend.

However, soon I realised the bar was very low for someone to be called posh. As someone said ,- if person was simply polite and not swearing constantly 🤦🏼‍♀️
My biggest shock was probably Come dine with me show, where inevitably one participant would be labelled as posh by the rest simply because they had a clean house and arranged cutlery properly... Or an occasional young woman with an outdated blowout and blue eyeshadow that had a tacky statue in her modest home...
At first I thought this was comedy but then realised people are being serious thinking this is posh!!
So in time the word posh almost got a sort of derogatory meaning for me (constantly learning the hidden layers of English language). If someone called me posh I think I would be offended and start wondering if I am wearing something tacky...

I don’t think you just have to be landed gentry and/or have a title to be posh. I’d say the top markers are private primary & secondary education, Received Pronunciation accent, a muddy Barbour jacket and calling their parents mummy and daddy

True. Haicenth Bucket is a classic example