How do you define someone as being posh?

I've decided a really good way to kick the bucket would be to die laughing at these posts! Nearly choked on my Cliquot Tesco's plonk.

NanKate, a glorious snap! I knew I liked you! What a lovely thing to have in common. 'Mardy arse' was sometimes used to describe me as well (usually when cream-crackered by long waits at railway stations), not by Mum but by various other grown-ups whose judgement I completely trust. Of course I'm sure you've long grown out of it just as I have oh good heavens I most certainly have not. The older I get the mardier I feel! It seems much more real & distinct to me than 'blue' or 'down.' In fact my family/friends used to debate if Jimmy Porter was an Angry Young Man or simply a mardy young t**d. There's fodder for Kenneth Tynan.

I feel a bit sorry for Kitty's Bexhill-on-Sea gent. But what a marvelous story! Perhaps his youth was spent in such fear of the Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler that he felt a range of much more scarifying emotions. (I still love the Goons ... no doubt a sign of desperate immaturity. 'The Dreaded B-PH' & 'Jet-Propelled Guided NAAFI' never fail to pop into the noggin at the most inappropriate moments - in doc's waiting-rooms or on buses, necessitating faux-coughing fits. Pathetic really!)

Jalima 'borrow a lab' ...absolutely brill, darling! You may have just started a source of income for the hard-up posh ... renting out one's dogs to pukkah-up the dwellings of the lesser! 'Now you will make sure Hamish & Hannah have their toast & Little Scarlet precisely at 4, won't you? Their poor little tums end up in a friteful state otherwise, you know, oh here are there little security blankets, Great-Grannie's fox stoles, they can't go anywhere without them. And if they seem homesick just go outside & shoot something, the sound of a Purdey always relaxes them.' Dogs For Your Digs. There's a fortune waiting to be made!

Pamela, you nearly made my appendix burst! But it would be worth it. Don't mind the gaps - dog hairs eventually mat up enough to plug some of the holes. Just give Jalima enough time to get her Lab-Lend, or Lab-Lease, business up & running & all will be tickety-boo!

Day6, it is tangible, isn't it? Even having grown up round a lot of it it, & being taught that none of it matters, it can still almost make me feel as if I'm among ... not foreigners, but another species. Sometimes. Sadly I've met some like you describe where condescension is mixed with it. But I've been lucky in knowing others who truly seem free from that taint. Don't ever feel bad about your accent! We need more of them ... people are starting to sound depressingly samey.

Ahoy Baggs! What a marvelous thing to do! So many wonderful people on here doing & writing marvelous things. It just made me feel so happy to read that you do that. People seem to be getting really boring & miserable & it's smashing to know of someone doing something properly life-size. That's the way things ought to be.

Oh how happy you ta-speakers-&-teachers-of-ta-to-children have made me The way lots of young people speak just seems so hard and cynical to my auld lugs. There was so much affection in older forms of speech, an understanding of the bond of goodwill between people. The young 'uns are ashamed of that sort of thing now. As usual, they don't know what they're missing! I suppose a lot of it probably came from people being poorer (hence the fact that most of it isn't posh-speak!) and living in extended families. I wish I could write all of you who still say such lovely things ta letters but a GN post will have to take the place of the fountain pen, Smythson bumph, silver salver & footman!

Wally, your own bike lol! If you ever have a chance to splash that Duncan Smith fellow by riding through a puddle please think of me as you do so ... & be sure to shout 'And that goes double for Norman Tebbitt!'

I think royalty is beyond posh!
I think they are so beyond posh they will not know what the word means.

I do recall HM saying that Princess Michael of Kent was 'a bit too grand for us'.
(the one from the Aussie suburbs )

I always say Mater and Pater btw.?

I think royalty is beyond posh! ?

I've heard Prince William refer to his Mum and his Dad (not Mummy and Daddy). Does that mean he's not posh?

You still refer to your parents as "Mummy and Daddy" when you are in your 40s.

"There's no way to fake the sort of confidence those people have. Wish I'd more of those particular genes. Not to be posh - just because it would be nice to be more confident! "

haporthrosie great post, and yes, the way some people exude confidence - not used to put people down - but because they know they'll speak up should they become distressed or annoyed and are sort of 'untouchable'. They sail through social occasions on an air of 'I've got this'.

It's tangible almost! Mind you, it must be said that these people have perfect diction too. I have always found they talk loudly as well, as a matter of course, because they have such confidence.

For me, there is an upper class uniform, especially for men. Look out for the checked shirt, tie, crew necked jumper, tweed jacket and beige trousers - moleskin probably.

Then there is shabby (hard up?) minor aristocracy. I can spot them a mile off too, even if they didn't speak so loudly!

In their presence I 'know my place'. I do feel they see right through this council house girl, no matter how deep the conversation. They look kindly upon people from different backgrounds as curiosities. It's a bit like doing their bit for children in need by even entertaining them. You can see it being played out and it makes me smile to myself.

I often think I'd like someone like Professor Henry Higgins to take me on and teach me to sound 'posh'. I have flat vowel sounds, so I am a bit of a lost cause.

Some of our furniture is inherited.
That makes us very posh indeed.

I taught my DC to say 'ta' as well and sometimes still say it, so perhaps we're not that posh.

Loose linen covers PamelaJ1 - and make sure that the dogs lie on them to make them look shabby very quickly. If you don't have a Labrador then borrow one for a while.

I'm so posh I've got my own private bike.

We are posh now.
OUR SOFA COVERS HAVE HOLES IN THEM, Sorry for shouting?.
They are not very old- only 35 years. What do we do? If we were really really posh we’d just let let them get worse. A bit posh I suppose we’d patch them.
However we are considering getting them recovered, maybe we’re not posh after all.

Don’t they say that marriage is mostly shouting ‘WHAT?’ At each other from different rooms?
If you are really posh then it isn’t possible, because one lives in a mansion.
If you are really, really posh then one sends a message by way of note, placed on a silver salver and a servant carries it to wherever DH happens to be.?

Mum told me never to throw things to someone as it was considered rude I must, always pass it to them.

Well done Kitty for persevering with your dialect lesson with your man from Bexhill on Sea. ?

I still say 'Ta' a lot, although when I think about it, only with family and friends. My side of the family all say it, so we must have said it as children in Scotland.

Our family shouts to each other, but when I was seeing a Speech Therapist I was told not to do it as a way of protecting my voice. I stopped shouting through the room to my DH for a while, but I still do it now. My Mum did used to tell us off when we were at home for doing it though, but only when the person being shouted at wasn't replying. She'd tell us to go an tell them instead of keep shouting.

As an adult, when I was much older I realised some people didn't shout through the room and that it was considered not rude exactly, but marked you out as a bit 'rough'. I think it's a bit of affectation and it makes sense to just shout!

My first two babies were born in Edinburgh. In our then social milieu 'Ta' was the norm when teaching little kids how to thank people.

"Leathery liver with pipes in". I don't think I've eaten liver since I left school, maggiemaybe, unless once or twice at my parents' house: mum used to do lambs' liver nicely with bacon.

My Nan used to yodel to call someone. Very good at it she was, too! Just remembered that.

I'm definitely not posh by that rule then, piggypoo! My standard way of calling people who are upstairs for a meal is a loud Ahoy! from the bottom of the stairs. I actually have quite a soft voice so I'm quite proud of my ahoys.

I use mardy a lot and I am Derbyshire born and mostly bred! I once tried for ten minutes to explain the concept of feeling mardy to a man in Bexhill on Sea.

Well Harporth my mum went further and called me a ‘mardy arse’ at times and she was right ?

Snap, I am the grand daughter and great grand daughter of theatricals so we have more in common, not just language.

Not shouting to each other from different rooms of the house, posh people will walk to the room, then speak!

NanKate lol - 'the mardy minx!' - one of my best, best friends was a West Riding chap & according to his Nan any little girl who liked sweets, had curly hair, skipped rope too jubilantly, or basically breathed oxygen, was a 'mardy little minx' or 'a mard'un!' Being a child & grand-child of Theatricals made me extremely suspect in her view but the rest of her family were very cultured and Liberal so she allowed me to darken the doorstep. This is so funny!

I'm such a rag-bag: born London but brought up quite gypsified, which was marvelous. Lots of family from Northumbria, quite a bit of Lancs, Suffolk, a streak of North Wales. Mainly Scots on my father's side. So I picked up all sorts of things. I loved Brummies (well, still do, just haven't been there in ages), they were always marvelous to children. And the men were awfully dishy! Perhaps that's where I got some of my speech from, though my Shepherd's Bush & Battersea family did the 'ta' thing as well. (Funny that my Kensington & Chiswick relations didn't! The difference a mile can make!) Isn't it funny ... for so long there's been so much pain & drama & confusion in my life I sort of trained myself not to think in terms of men (my great love died many, many years ago so it's all been a bit odd.) And now just thinking about a few dear old words & phrases has got me quite wobbly ...

Felice I tried to do the ribs with knife-&-fork once ... how anyone manages that I don't know! I just sat & moved the cutlery about, miming as I quietly starved, thinking of rationing & trying to tell myself not to be so soft as to actually require food! Thank heavens we ended up in a pub later ... I must've got through five packets of crisps! Napkin before drinking is decent, I think. Makes sense to me. Clever you with the soup!

The only time I have ever "lost it" with DH was for putting a knife in his mouth. I know in my head that it really doesn't matter, but it just enrages me to see anyone do it. However, chicken wings are OK to eat with your fingers, if you wrap them in a serviette.

Sitting in a restaurant last week with SO and 2 friends watching SO eating Chicken Wings and Ribs with a knife and fork (took him a while).
He also gets upset if people do not wipe their mouths with a napkin before drinking during a meal and fell out with his DIL when she quickly licked something off her knife.
I mean a real falling out.
It doesn't matter what he is eating he has to have a knife and fork, I tease him and put them out with soup.

Where do you originate from Harporth ? I was born in the heart of Birmingham where this sort of language was the norm.

If you know what ‘mardy’ means we are both on the same wavelength ?

NanKate, I just went completely weak at the knees at the thought of your Sainsbury's chappie! I'm always saying 'ta ducks' and 'ta love' ... at some point it went from being completely normal (though most un-posh, of course!) to being yet another example of the fact that I belong to a nearly extinct species. And when men are still man enough to speak our sweet old language it just does something to me! Thanks for telling me, ducks!

Haporth yes I remember hearing people say Ta all the time in my youth. In our local Sainsburys here in the south east, one of the men on the checkout calls me ‘me duck’ which really takes me back to my childhood ?