poshen
UK/pɒʃən/
poshen verb: to make or become posh, to posh up.
Verb
poshen (third-person singular simple present poshens, present participle poshening, simple past and past participle poshened)
- To make or become posh, to posh up
- ([…] He's a grammar-school lad on the make, who poshened up at Cambridge and now can't speak normal, which makes him sound ludicrous when he tries. Along the way he also poshened up his team, dumping Fulham to follow Chelsea.)1997, New Statesman, volume 126, numbers 4316-4327, page 35
- Most people tend to poshen up their accent if they go for a job interview and a lot of us have a Sunday-best voice for when we answer the phone or talk to the doctor. We save our real accent for our family and friends.2005, Judith Holder, It's Grim Up North, page 99
Forms of poshen
| third-person singular present | poshens |
|---|---|
| present participle | poshening |
| past participle | poshened |
| past | poshened |
Origin of poshen
From posh + -en.
Questions about poshen
- What does poshen mean?
- Poshen means to make or become posh, to posh up.
- What part of speech is poshen?
- Poshen is a verb.
- How do you pronounce poshen?
- Poshen is pronounced /pɒʃən/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of poshen?
- The past tense of poshen is poshened.
Words near poshen in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: poshen (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “poshen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poshen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.