Stagecoaches ! Stagecoaches ! Decadent ! When I were a lad we didnt even have clogs !

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexper...rdorigins/posh

I think old mother shipton foretold the spice girls and it started then.

"Posh did not originally stand for "Port Out, Starboard Home" (referring to 1st class cabins shaded from the sun on outbound voyages east, and homeward heading voyages west). The musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang popularized this erroneous etymology" (from this page). Plenty of other references out there too.

But more to the point ... many words have 'original meanings' that are no longer relevant, and knowing that original meaning is irrelevant for current usage ...

Not only irrelevant but wrong - seeing as a nice pair of winter boots from M&S can't have anything to do with steaming to Bombay

However, I do like to try and absorb as much of this stuff as poss as the original sentiment remains even after the reference in the actual words has died out

It helps with languages too - for instance 'beyond the pale' refers to beyond the palings where the palings are a picket fence. Someone on the outside the fence. In Spanish, a 'palillo' is a toothpick - like a tiny wooden paling. Absorbing all these connections helps me to remember the word because human brains work on connections and associations.

What I am saying is that no knowledge is useless and I like to absorb as much as I can as it's amazing when it comes in useful. Anyone who has ever had a piece of pork chop wedged in their teeth in a remote area of Spain will vouch for that.

It can be amusing too finding out that the Yorkshire phrase 'clap thi lug 'ole' is very close to old Danish of the type spoken in Iceland. So long live the obscure references.

Just read this article on the Beeb. Seems appropriate. Oh and I have heard the agglesteans, also wassuck is common parlance in my family.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8338077.stm

Don't know about wassack/wassuck - could be the demeaning of the Polish again ? We had lots of Polish DP's (displaced persons) living around us after the war

I have just gone to google language translator and entered

'clap your lug hole' which is Yorkshire for 'smack your ear'

I asked it to translate into modern Danish and it returns:

'Klappe din lug hul'

Anyone who doubts me can try it right now...

It's weird to know I speak Viking
!

That's what I'm banking on. It's so much more positive than describing yourself as having a head full of useless trivia.

I agree - I love tracking down the roots of words/phrases, and it helps me remember. I was simply taking issue with the 'superior' tone implied in "Would Americans generally have any clue about that kind of stuff?"

This American would. Before I switched out of the English Lit dept. in college I had the chance to take a really good course called something like "Origin of Languages," (or something similar). It was actually quite interesting .... great professor probably made it so.

Word etymology was banned in the US during the cold war.

So do Americans say 'posh' or not?

Only with a phony British accent.

Seriously, I'd say that the meaning is generally known (unlike "butty", for example), but the word is not commonly used by Americans.