How do you define someone as being posh?

I've always thought that getting out of the bath to have a pee was posh.

If you can afford a second home somewhere like the Dordogne with a 'lady who does' to clean it, that's posh, maybe a swimming pool in the back garden with an 'in' and 'out' driveway, electronic gates and a room called 'the library'.
All the other 'stuff' like washing machines, dishwasher, a car for every adult - all that's fairly commonplace these days.

Like it, loopy!

My friend Jo thinks we're posh because we have Lurpak !

Well no Baggs, I think you are being very U by having an unsliced loaf rather than a precut loaf from a supermarket. I think there are modern indicators. U, having an iphone or a very old basic phone, Non U having anything else. U wearing very plain clothes, Non U wearing animal prints.
Any other ideas?

Once saw this in an old etiquette book: "Bite not thy bread but break it".

So I'm being dead non-U when I slice a thick crust off my home-made loaf, spread it thickly with butter and marmalade and sink my teeth into it. Oh, but! the joy of a thick marmalade 'piece'!

PS Wilma I agree it is simply easier to tear a bread roll BTW.

I think this is all tied up with the confusion between class and good manners and etiquette. Not all ‘etiquette’ is based on manners but a set of rules which is supposed to indicate your ‘class’.

So good etiquette dictates that you tear your bread role, squash your peas and don’t put your elbows in the table.

These were considered good manners. But really where do manners come into these examples? Other indicators like not talking with your mouth full I thoroughly agree with.

I think it’s usually only the ‘middle classes’ who care about the sillier edicts on ‘etiquette’ so that they can reassure themselves of their status in the way of the two Ronnie sketch - ‘I look up to him; I look down on him’

I used to cut bread rolls in restaurants until I saw somebody using their fingers and thought it was a very good idea. Never used a knife again. In fact, the older I get, the more I please myself in restaurants. I just ask my friends to excuse me and get on with enjoying the food!

Another U here. I was always told you're 'posh' if you break your bread roll with your fingers and not 'posh' if you cut it with a knife
I have friends who are titled, live in a castle and are the least 'posh' people I've ever met. Milk bottle on the table broken down cars on the driveway, bank balance at crisis point. Posh like age is just a word.

We were not allowed to use the word “posh” (or toilet or serviette or quid) because they were COMMON. There, that’s both threads covered.

Shame. makes dinner time more interesting, that's for sure.

We have some rather posh friends (well, more than one lot) and all I could say when shown around their rambling but cosy and lovely old house was - 'do you have a cleaner'?

Definitely no cannabis in their garden btw.

I have friends who live in very splendidly squalid conditions who I consider posh. They have friends with nicknames like 'bubbles' and 'squiffy' (Sorry to the person with that username!) grow cannabis in their garden, and are delightfully eccentric.

When eating asparagus in butter, one needs a linen napkin tucked under the chin as mentioned above.
And also a kitchen roll plonked on the table comes in handy.

I agree Monica

I tried that DT quiz, after being unable to select any of the answers on the two of the first three questions, I gave up.

I think it would be difficult to find anyone who doesn't have some characteristics that would be defined as 'U' and others that would be defined as 'Non U'. I suspect the quiz gets answered in line with what the participant wants the answer to be.

I think our tin bath was full length, so there’s posh. But at one stage the shared facility at the bottom of the yard was an earth closet, so maybe not.

When I've ever been called posh in a derogatory way it's because I ( and my children) do not have a regional accent. All those words that Nancy M says we must use if we want to be U can be learnt by anyone!

Someone is posh if they have ever cheered the staff on at the school sports 'Chauffeurs Race'.

The quiz says I’m out and out U.
I’m not! I work!
Ergo, I’m working class!?

grannysyb -
Exactly the same with me. I didn’t allow my children to say them, either.

Say not as!

I wasnt allowed to say pardon, toilet, serviette, lounge or dessert. Had to as what or sorry, lavatory or loo, napkin, and pudding. Still tend to use these words!

TerriBull
It was the wonderful Alan Clark.
Why didn't the quiz ask if one owned an Asparagus steamer?