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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What does "posh" mean to you?

364 replies

FlatteredFool · 06/03/2021 01:09

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?

OP posts:
Ploughingthrough · 06/03/2021 13:49

I get called Posh because of the way I speak - I have a very South East accent because I was born and brought up there. I'm not posh- went to an ordinary state school, lived in an ordinary semi detached house with ordinary parents who had ordinary jobs. I just sound it apparently!

RedGoldAndGreene · 06/03/2021 13:51

I think Old Money as posh (titles, generations doing what the previous did like going to Eton then Oxford, perhaps a stately home)

I don't think of New Money as posh. I think that their descendants will be in the future but I wouldn't use the word posh.

Expectingsomethingwonderful · 06/03/2021 14:02

I am laughing as I read this thread as I think 'posh' is very relative.

I was often called posh when I was younger purely because of my accent. My grandmother taught us elocution so we are all very well spoken. We live in the country and have spent our lives around horses, mixing with the landed gentry as well as the typical back-street horse dealers, nobody cares what their background is, just how they manage their horses.

Posh to me would be Eton or Harrow, not private school - that's where the rich celebrities, footballers and scrap metal dealers send their kids. They are the opposite of posh despite the money. Around here people send their kids private if they are not clever enough for grammar. The clever money goes to grammar school (we still have the 11 plus).

Its also not about clothes or possessions, again that is an indicator of money not class. These days most of the landed gentry I know are short of cash! Like someone said previously, it is about codes of conduct, knowledge of the arts and literature and the social circles they move in.

Nellie850 · 06/03/2021 14:10

Posh to me is someone possibly from landed gentry and has not had to work hard to climb the ladder of property etc. That’s not to say these people do not work hard btw just that they don’t NEED to to survive. Fancy dinner parties, animals, going shooting etc. They probably also drink like fish. I love posh people, they’re generally pretty funny and don’t take themselves too seriously IM(very limited)E

A snob is altogether different, a snob thinks they are better than everyone else. It doesn’t seem to be linked to class or financial gain. Anyone can be a snob. I do not like snobs.

Mintjulia · 06/03/2021 14:14

This gets me down. I've been called posh a few times and it felt like a criticism.

Yet I'm a single mum, from a free school meals family, not great childhood, went to an inner city poly, don't live anywhere smart and my car is12 yo this year.

I've learned to ignore it but still puzzled.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 06/03/2021 14:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 06/03/2021 14:17

Oh god, wrong thread. I always wondered how people post on wrong threads. Now I know. Sorry. Confused

RosesAndHellebores · 06/03/2021 14:19

Oh I don't know @MammaMiaWallace - I had a house mate in the early 80s from a Continental country although her parents lived in the UK. They were comfortable rather than wealthy. She curated herself as very posh and is now by marriage in Burke's Peerage. However, despite that she is and was a crashing snob and is not posh iyswim.

VegetarianDeathCult · 06/03/2021 14:35

@RosesAndHellebores

I think it's quite interesting. Take DS for example: he has curated being a bit "London lad", is left leaning, wears black jeans, trainers, t shirts, hoodie, 26 now but did 2 gap years with a "trendyish" start-up company with a young sales and marketing team. He was known as "posh boy" - good humouredly.

His interests are music, art, books, politics, sport, including playing football. His colleagues had no way of knowing his background.

But they don't need to. Just as he doesn't need to be in the studbook to code as 'posh', at least to certain people, like these colleagues.

I mean, it doesn't mean they're correct in any objective way (assuming you aren't in fact landed gentry) -- it just means that in a society where social class is absolutely entrenched, so that people make class judgements about others without even being aware of it, or that they are class judgements, something about him came across as 'higher up the social scale than I am' to these colleagues.

It depends on the perceiver's social class, and their life experience, and their ability to recognise social codes and shibboleths.

To some people I code as 'posh' simply because I write for a living, have a lot of friends in the arts, and love and am knowledgeable about literature, painting, opera etc. It's not true in any objective sense I grew up with an outdoor toilet and an illiterate parents, and was the first person in my family to finish secondary school, far less go to university, discovered these things on my own, and DH and I don't have pots of cash even now but it's because I'm perceived to have a lot of cultural capital.

EachBleachBlairTrump · 06/03/2021 14:39

I get called posh because I live in Essex, don't use a glottal stop as liberally as fake tan and don't think the height of parenting is a trip to McDonald's and their own IPad by eighteen months. Oh people also often comment on the size of my TV (not massive) and I've been told that makes me posh. I was born in East London long before gentrification with parents who both left school at 15. Some people just have a low bar.

CovidKingfisher · 06/03/2021 14:41

@MagicSummer

I would consider myself to be 'posh' and have been described as such by many people. I speak very well, use a wide vocabulary, my father was a professional, my mother never worked, we lived in a large house with grounds, I went to public school and I ultimately inherited quite a large sum of money from my parents. I would rather go to the ballet or an opera than a festival or pop concert, I know how to use my cutlery correctly, how to hold a conversation with anybody I meet and know all about the correct etiquette for the situation.

Hmm, I was always told that if you called yourself posh then you are probably not posh Grin

MarshaBradyo · 06/03/2021 14:43

@RosesAndHellebores

I think it's quite interesting. Take DS for example: he has curated being a bit "London lad", is left leaning, wears black jeans, trainers, t shirts, hoodie, 26 now but did 2 gap years with a "trendyish" start-up company with a young sales and marketing team. He was known as "posh boy" - good humouredly.

His interests are music, art, books, politics, sport, including playing football. His colleagues had no way of knowing his background.

Except by his accent. It might be that
VegetarianDeathCult · 06/03/2021 14:45

Oh people also often comment on the size of my TV (not massive) and I've been told that makes me posh.

That's interesting, @EachBleachBlairTrump -- under what size counts as an indicator of poshness, from the comments? Grin

EachBleachBlairTrump · 06/03/2021 14:50

@VegetarianDeathCult I'm not sure what the cut off point is! Ours is something like 30/ 32 inches and sits on top of a sideboard type thing . I think it is plenty big enough but I think if it doesn't take up an entire wall it's pretty unusual in these parts. 😁

staceyflack · 06/03/2021 14:57

Saying sweater, instead of jumper 🙂, is one of my gauges. My neighbour once said I was posh 😂... because she's really common, and I'm just common. It's relative innit.

FuckingFabulous · 06/03/2021 15:00

Proper posh people are titled in my opinion.

Wannabes are just lofty twats who go abroad every year and only wear raincoats from Joules

Wondermule · 06/03/2021 15:03

@FuckingFabulous

Proper posh people are titled in my opinion.

Wannabes are just lofty twats who go abroad every year and only wear raincoats from Joules

Like Barbara Windsor?
Wondermule · 06/03/2021 15:04

The people that I know that I consider ‘posh’ love a pound store and really scummy nightclubs!

Donkeydonut · 06/03/2021 15:06

@staceyflack

Saying sweater, instead of jumper 🙂, is one of my gauges. My neighbour once said I was posh 😂... because she's really common, and I'm just common. It's relative innit.
Jumper is the ‘correct’ term isn’t it?
VestaTilley · 06/03/2021 15:19

The only true posh people are royalty and aristocracy eg nobility and landed gentry, and - at a push- the old fashioned upper middle classes who’ve been going to university and private school since the year dot, not just since the 1990s university boom.

Not the self made or nouveau riche types who are nowadays the only ones who can afford to live in Chelsea etc - they’re just all fur coat no knickers Grin

TalktotheFoot · 06/03/2021 15:24

Old money.
General family background and the people they know.
Clothes.
Hobbies.
Cars.
In some cases - surname, occasionally first name as well.
General demeanour, courtesy, manners etc.
Deportment.

RosesAndHellebores · 06/03/2021 15:44

We still call a sweater/jersey/jumper a "pully-woolly". Left over from toddler times Blush

@MarshaBradyo possibly.

Donkeydonut · 06/03/2021 15:48

Humans essentially are quite insecure when one reads the long lists that they judge other people on. I know we probably all do it subconsciously but some of the detail is quite funny.

Very pleased to see the battered Volvo trope wheeled out though, it wouldn’t be a class thread without it.

TheKeatingFive · 06/03/2021 15:55

Very pleased to see the battered Volvo trope wheeled out though

😂

Never change, MN, never change

Nesski · 06/03/2021 16:07

@FlatteredFool if you pronounce scone as a s-con as opposed to a s-cone then I would consider you posh Grin

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