A favorite story about posh says that it is an acronym for port outward, starboard home. British civil servants traveling to India on the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company line supposedly liked to have their accommodations on the port side of the ship leaving home and on the starboard side coming back as these locations were shady and away from the weather. According to the tale, such first-class or posh staterooms became a synonym for anything elegant or sophisticated, but, unfortunately, the famous P&O line has no record of such an expression ever being used. This doesn"t prove that the ingenious story isn"t true, but the term is just as likely a contraction of "polished" of "polish." Posh is first recorded in a897 as meaning "a dandy" and so may also be a corruption of the slang term pot ("big"), a person of importance. A corruption of the Scottish tosh, "neat and trim," isn"t out of the question, either.