Word.ws English Dictionary

posh

/pɒʃ/US/pɑʃ/

posh adjective: associated with the upper classes.

Adjective

posh (comparative posher or more posh, superlative poshest or most posh)

  1. Associated with the upper classes.
    • She talks with a posh accent.
    • In antenatal clinic, an extremely posh patient attends for a routine appointment. All is well with her extremely posh fetus. Her extremely posh eight-year-old asks her a question about the economy (!), and before she answers, she asks her extremely posh five-year-old, ‘Do you know what the economy...2017, Adam Kay, This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
    Synonyms:
    upper-crust
  2. Stylish; elegant; exclusive; luxurious; expensive.
    • Near-synonym: plush
    • After the performance, they went out to a very posh restaurant.
    Synonyms:
    high-end, plush
  3. (Northern England, Scotland, especially, offensive, usually) Snobbish, materialistic, prejudiced, under the illusion that one is better than everyone else.
    • We have a right posh git moving in next door.
    Synonyms:
    stuck-up

Interjection

  1. An exclamation expressing derision.
    • The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap my fingers at him.1890, Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Was

Noun (1)

posh (countable and uncountable, plural poshes)

  1. (UK, countable, obsolete, slang) A halfpenny or other coin of little value.
  2. (UK, obsolete, slang, uncountable) Money.

Verb

posh (third-person singular simple present poshes, present participle poshing, simple past and past participle poshed)

  1. To make posh or posher (more posh).
    Synonyms:
    poshen

Noun (2)

posh (countable and uncountable, plural poshes)

  1. (dialectal) A sudden and heavy fall or gush of rain or water.
    • Did yer see what a posh the water came down the bruck ater the thaw, and no wonder the snow was a fut deep.1897 March 6, Leamington Courier, quoted in the EDD
    • There has been quite a posh of rain.1942, Thoroton Society, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire
  2. (uncountable) Fragments produced by an impact.
  3. (uncountable) Slush.

Proper noun capitalized: Posh

Posh

  1. (slang) Peterborough United F.C., a football club from Peterborough, England.
    • Peterbough United have been playing at Lincoln, in something of a local derby. EMR has put on a six-car Class 158 as an additional train, to take 'Posh' fans home (Posh is the team's nickname, by the way).2024 April 17, “Rural railways: do they deliver?”, in RAIL, number 1007, page 58

posh meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

posh in Hindi

पॉश, पोश

posh in Tamil

ஆடம்பரமான, சொகுசான, மேல்தட்டுப் பண்புகளுடைய, வசதியான, செலவு மிக்க

posh in Marathi

पॉश, पोश

posh in Urdu

خوش پوش, نویلا, پررونق, ٹھاٹ کا
More languagesFewer languages
posh in Bengali
পোশ
posh in Telugu
పోష్
posh in Malayalam
ഏറ്റം മോടിപിടിപ്പിച്ച, അത്യന്തം മോടിയുള്ള, പരിഷ്കാരമുള്ള, ഫാഷനുള്ള
posh in Kannada
ಸೊಗಸಾದ, ಸೊಮ್ಮಿನ, ಮೇಲ್ವರ್ಗದ, ಮೇಲ್ವರ್ಗಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ
posh in Punjabi
ਪੌਸ਼, ਪੋਸ਼, ਪੋਜ਼ਸ਼
posh in Gujarati
પોશ, પૉશ
posh in Odia
ପୋଶ୍
posh in Nepali
पोश, पॉश, पॉशमा
posh in Tagalog
sosyal

Examples of posh in a sentence

  • Jan Petter Vala is serving part of a 10-year murder sentence on a posh island in southern Norway.2012 May 24, John D. Sutter, “Welcome to the world’s nicest prison”, in CNN:
  • I could hear the posh of water issuing from the mouth of a lion fountain that was set in a nearby niche.2021 July 28, Diana Elmore, Footprints in Time: Memoirs of Previous Lifetimes, Dorrance Publishing, →ISBN, page 83:

All 37 example sentences with posh

Synonyms of posh

All synonyms of posh

Forms of posh

Adjective
comparativeposher
comparativemore posh
superlativeposhest
superlativemost posh
Noun
pluralposhes
Verb
third-person singular presentposhes
present participleposhing
past participleposhed
pastposhed

Origin of posh

Unknown. Most likely derived from Romani posh (“half”), either because posh-kooroona (“half a crown”) (originally a substantial sum of money) was used metaphorically for anything pricey or upper-class, or because posh-houri (“half-penny”) came to refer to money generally. A period slang dictionary defines "posh" as a term used by thieves for "money : generic, but specifically, a halfpenny or other small coin". An example is given from James Payn's The Eavesdropper (1888): "They used such funny terms: 'brads,' and 'dibbs,' and 'mopusses,' and 'posh' ... at last it was borne in upon me that they were talking about money." Evidence exists for a slang sense from the 1890s meaning dandy, which is quite possibly related. A popular folk etymology holds that the term is an acronym for "port out, starboard home", describing the cooler, north-facing cabins taken by the most aristocratic or rich passengers travelling from Britain to India and back. However, there is no evidence for this claim. It could also possibly be a clipping of polished. See also the articles mentioned in the References section below for additional discussion.

Compare pash (“smash, bash; of rain: fall heavily”).

Words formed from posh

Phrases with posh

Words that rhyme with posh

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about posh

What does posh mean?
Posh means associated with the upper classes.
What is posh in Hindi?
Posh in Hindi is पॉश, पोश. See Posh meaning in Hindi.
How do you use posh in a sentence?
Jan Petter Vala is serving part of a 10-year murder sentence on a posh island in southern Norway.
What part of speech is posh?
Posh can be an adjective, an interjection, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce posh?
Posh is pronounced /pɑʃ/ (US).

Words near posh in the dictionary

  1. Posey County
  2. Posey vest
  3. Posey vests
  4. Posești
  5. Posgam
  6. posh
  7. Posh 'n' Becks
  8. posh nosh
  9. posh up
  10. posh wank
  11. posh wanks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: posh (page history and authors); Posh (page history and authors); posh (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posh (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posh (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); posh (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posh (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); posh (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-posh.ogg, En-au-Posh.ogg.

Cite this entry: “posh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/posh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.