Port Out, Starboard Home

Port Out, Starboard Home (or Port Outward, Starboard Home) is a phrase popularly believed to provide the etymology for the word . According to this belief, "Port Out" and "Starboard Home" were the most desirable cabin locations on ships traveling to and from British colonies in the Far East before the development of air conditioning, because they were shaded from the sun in both directions. However, extensive searching of shipping company records and tickets from that period has failed to reveal any evidence for explicit "Port Outbound, Starboard Home" reservations or other occurrences of the phrase. [http://www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt/posh.html Oxford English Dictionary, BBC Wordhunt] ]

This popular but baseless etymology is illustrated by a song in the musical version of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". The song "Posh!" includes the lyrics:

:"Whenever I'm bored I travel abroad but ever so properly:Port Out, Starboard Home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh."

The true origin of the word "posh" is obscure. It appears in 1890 in the book "A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant" by Albert Barrère & Charles Godfrey Leland, but with a definition of "modern term for money, originally used for a halfpenny or small coin. From the gypsy "pash" or "posh", a half." It also gives a final definition of "A Dandy.." in the entry. This publication, in two volumes, had only 675 copies printed by Ballanyne Press for subscribers. The first widely published use of the word was in the British satirical magazine "Punch" on 25 September 1918, although an earlier possible reference uses the word "push". [http://www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt/posh.html Oxford English Dictionary, BBC Wordhunt] ]

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