What does "posh" mean to you?

[FlatteredFool]

What is it about someone that would make you describe them as posh? I would think it's relative and depends on how much you assign class to people but I find it interesting.

I've been called posh a few times and it bugs me because I'm not posh at all. What does posh even mean? Money? Privately educated? Big house? Second home? Plummy accent? High flying career? Having friends in high places? Owning horses? Private jet? Those things just say to me that someone has plenty of money. None of them apply to me and the people I know that do have some of those things aren't posh to me either. Is "posh" the opposite of "common" ( I know how mumsnet hates that term, sorry) or is it something that can't be pinpointed exactly?

@longwayoff

@SmeleanorSmellstrop

Accent and education. Money most definitely has nothing to do with it.

This. Nothing more.

@Blueberries0112 that’s quite an unusual attitude towards the British! (And very lovely) where are you from?

Ok new category= "Naice posh"= people who have breeding, deportment, manners, confidence, money and poise.

I agree @EWAB We all need to cultivate confidence in ourselves and not place importance on symbols of wealth

@Blueberries0112

I think all British are posh to me lol they look so well dress and pretty with good postures

I think that about the French! (and the Italians!)

I think that about the French! (and the Italians!)

Grazie! I'm wearing DHs top and Harry Potter pj bottoms 😆

When I hear the word "posh" I think about crisps. I know people who've been to private school but they are probably just middle class rather than posh.

Dd called me posh again last night but I still can't get her to explain why I'm posh 😂It's slightly amusing as I suspect her dad and his gf have been making comments.

Surely it's all about money? Doesn't it come from Diary of a Nobody?

I think it's all to do with people's behaviour as to whether they're actually "posh naice" (truly nice and kind to the waitress and people who would be treated badly by snobs) or just snobs (who think they're better and want everyone else to think they're better even though they are probably deep in debt for keeping up with the Jones's- aka "Posh naice")

Oh, MyCat, I love the Pooters. Just imagine the MN threads 'my son, Lupin . . . '

Why oh why do these threads ALWAYS end up with hordes of wanna-be 'posh' posters describing themselves?

It's either faux-wonderment, that their acquaintances consider them 'posh' (thanks to fervent trying-oh-so-hard to emulate their own ideas of 'posh' peeps) OR - with faux-reverse snobbery and claiming to be really, really the very salt of the earth types.

OP asked what does 'posh' mean to you, not why do you think you are considered 'posh'.

The UC really do not give a flying fuck about anybody they deem below them, which is the majority of the humanity, and the politeness and marvellous manners so fawned about here are really just a front for indifferent contempt.

Sorry to drag Harry and Meghan into this thread but did anyone, posh or otherwise, fall about laughing at their proclaiming to live an 'authentic'life standing in their chicken shed? With Oprah and a camera team. Are they posh? How can they not be?

@janegrey333 me and mine - me and my family.

Properly posh is old money, lots of land which is tenanted to people (who actually do the work with no hope of ever owning it) Accent is very important as is education. Not necessarily education in terms of being clever but education is terms of going to the correct schools to mix with the correct people and speak the correct way. Properly posh people will be lovely to you and everyone they meet but they’d never consider you marriage material for their offspring.
They don’t care what anyone thinks of them because it doesn’t matter. They can drive an old car because they own land and large houses and tenanted cottages etc A new car doesn’t register on their radar as being something to aspire to. They will buy new but they’ll keep it for ever and it will be expensive.
I think it’s more admirable to create your own wealth. It’s not difficult to live a ‘ posh ‘ life if you’ve been handed everything on plate.

They will be nice to your face but they won’t invite you into their inner circle. That’s reserved for people just like them.

I’d love to be posh 😂

Nothing you buy or wear or drive can ever make you properly posh.

I think it’s more admirable to create your own wealth. It’s not difficult to live a ‘ posh ‘ life if you’ve been handed everything on plate

There are plenty of upper class people who run through their fortunes from gambling (including gambling on stock market) many divorces or just compulsive extravagance.
Lord Hesketh for example and the late Lord Bristol.
Unless their children are good at making money their grandchildren will be without the privileges of their forbears.

@Andante57

I think it’s more admirable to create your own wealth. It’s not difficult to live a ‘ posh ‘ life if you’ve been handed everything on plate

There are plenty of upper class people who run through their fortunes from gambling (including gambling on stock market) many divorces or just compulsive extravagance.
Lord Hesketh for example and the late Lord Bristol.
Unless their children are good at making money their grandchildren will be without the privileges of their forbears.

They'll be without the money, but will be likely to retain the social and cultural capital of the UC, or much of it, so will still have considerable privilege, particularly as the adult children will still have the benefit (social as well as intellectual) of an elite education and the connections made by it from before the money was lost.

A friend's husband's parents lost the family money and the family pile in Kent (they actually live in their own former dower house these days).

He works in antiques and lives in most ways a very ordinary day to day middle-class lifestyle on an ordinary enough salary, but he's an 'Honourable', child of one of the debutantes of the final 1958 season, an Old Harrovian, and is incredibly well-connected to various Establishment/aristocratic figures. And his very ordinary house has an unusual number of family antiques. His salary or what his house looks like wouldn't give much of a sense of his class position, because while his salary might be the same, he's far more privileged than, say, a lower-middle-class 'self-made' IT person or teacher, who might earn roughly the same.

So their grandchildren will be educated at the local comp? I imagine even if a fortune is lost there will money in trust to ‘ educate ‘ the next generation. That education will give them the connections to give them a head start in life . They won’t even have to be very clever either.

@ConsuelaHammock

Nothing you buy or wear or drive can ever make you properly posh.

True.

[quote FireflyRainbow]@janegrey333 me and mine - me and my family.[/quote]
My family and I...?

@longwayoff

Shooting pheasants is a bit nouveau isn't it? Shooting peasants? That's a bit more like it.

Jolly good.

Silurian, yes but as I said, unless the children are good at making money the privilege runs out after a generation or two.
Living in a dower house with lovely antiques may not be the same as living the big house but it’s a lot better than what most people have.

The DC of people I would put in the category you are describing own proper evening clothes from their mid-teens, and wear them regularly and naturally to their own parties, not just their parent's parties. They get a morning suit (or inherit one) when their friends start to get married.

@Andante57

Silurian, yes but as I said, unless the children are good at making money the privilege runs out after a generation or two. Living in a dower house with lovely antiques may not be the same as living the big house but it’s a lot better than what most people have.

Oh, I agree they objectively have a very nice life, but admittedly, I'm not the one living in a modest house within sight of the ancestral home I couldn't hang on to and railing about the nasty modifications the purchasers have been making for the last 30 years. I'm not sure it's conducive to happiness, especially as the losses were self-inflicted...

It's interesting to think about the loss of privilege over generations. Their son, my friend's husband, certainly hasn't been able to pass on his own elite public school and Oxford education, or of course the experience of living in a minor stately home, but his children (still in their teens) still attended good private schools, and have a lot of social and cultural capital, in part because their mother (ordinary MC background) is an influential cultural figure, and in the most primitive way, they are used to having people they see on TV (arts, politics) come over for dinner. It will be interesting to see what their children go on to do, and where their children will be 'placed' in turn.