1830 Sessions Papers Old Bailey, 1824–33 VI. 590/1 He had not got the posh (which means money) yet.

1839 H. Brandon Dict. Flash or Cant Lang. in W. A. Miles Poverty, Mendicity & Crime 168 The paper makers get the tats and never tip the motts a posh. [Translation] Thieves who pretend to belong to paper mills get the rags and never pay the women a farthing.

1846 ‘Lord Chief Baron’ Swell's Night Guide (new ed.) 68 As I used to doss there sometimes, her nibs got sweet on me, and in course we did our reg'lars and the dossing mongary, lush and posh.

1886 W. Newton Secrets Tramp Life Revealed 8 Posh..money of all kind.

1892 M. Williams Round London i. v. 67 That sort of patter..is the thing to get the posh.

1905 Daily Chron. 2 Mar. 4/5 ‘But if I'd a brighfull o' posh,’ she said, ‘I wouldn't parker no wedge to you.’

1876 F. K. Robinson Gloss. Words Whitby Posh, a soft mass. ‘There's a posh on't’, a pasty looking quantity. ‘T'land's all in posh’, in a soaked or muddy condition.

1898 B. Kirkby Lakeland Words 116 Oor land's in a fair posh sen t'rain com, 'at is't.

1876 C. H. Davis Narr. North Polar Exped. Ship Polaris iii. 75 The vessel was forced through brash or posh ice.

1885 G. W. Melville In Lena Delta ii. 22 Forcing our way through a stream of posh.

1890 A. Barrère & C. G. Leland Dict. Slang II. 146/2 Posh,..a dandy.

1902 J. S. Farmer & W. E. Henley Slang V. 261/1 Posh, (society). A dandy.

1912 Tailor 21 xi. 4/2 If he described another [tailor] as a great ‘posh,’ which means well-dressed, the whistle would place him in a..ridiculous light.

1923 E. Gepp Essex Dial. Dict. (ed. 2) 88 Posh, rubbish, nonsense. A variant of pash, a mash, fragments.

1924 J. Galsworthy White Monkey ii. xii. 214 Was he a fool? Could he not let well alone? Pity was posh! And yet!

1953 A. Miller Crucible (1956) i. 20 Oh, posh!.. She took fright, is all.

1957 J. Kerouac On the Road i. viii. 49 You're talking absolute bullshit and Wolfean romantic posh!

1991 M. Curtin Plastic Tomato Cutter viii. 62 Harrods where they were encouraged to refer to the emporium as ‘the shop’. What posh.

1914 E. C. Vivian Brit. Army from Within v. 86 The cavalryman, far more than the infantryman, makes a point of wearing ‘posh’ clothing on every possible occasion—‘posh’ being a term used to designate superior clothing, or articles of attire other than those issued by and strictly conforming to regulations.

1916 Daily Mail 3 Nov. 4/6 Your contributor ‘O. S. P.’, in his article ‘War Words and Phrases’, omits one word in common use among soldiers at the front. It is the word ‘posh’, which appears to have more than one meaning… I have heard a good meal described as ‘very posh’, and it is also used as a substitute for ‘swank’ on occasion.

1918 Punch 25 Sept. 204 Oh, yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there.

1919 S. Graham Private in Guards viii. 182 If you are looking smart you're looking ‘very posh’.

1923 P. G. Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves vii. 72 Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another.

1927 W. Deeping Doomsday xiv. 153 ‘You like it.’ ‘It's the poshest thing I've ever seen, old chap.’

1929 J. B. Priestley Good Compan. ii. v. 391 I'd like to have..a very cosy car, small but frightfully posh.

1939 D. Thomas Coll. Lett. (1987) 380 You'd love it here; the beer and the people, the house and the sea, are all very posh in a good sense.

1954 A. S. C. Ross in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 55 45 Posh ‘smart’ is essentially non-U, but recently, it has gained ground among schoolboys of all classes.

1966 H. Davies New London Spy (1967) 35 Snobs can go to the posh pubs. Those who wish to be thought ‘with-it’ have the arty pubs.

1979 London Rev. Bks. 25 Oct. 1/4 He gets a menial job at a posh private school.

1987 N. Hinton Buddy's Song xiii. 73 The people were obviously very rich and they talked in an extremely posh way.

1999 Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 12 Aug. (Tempo section) 9 A room in a beautiful old building on the posh, luxurious Upper East Side overlooking Fifth Avenue and the rolling greenswards of Central Park.

2004 Daily Tel. 5 May 17/4 I've never managed to extract any benefit in England from being an Hon. Working-class people don't distinguish between hereditary and non-hereditary titles and simply regard you as just another posh git.

1915 Blackwood's Mag. 198 255/2 Posh may be defined, very roughly, as a useless striving after gentlemanly culture.

1941 S. J. Baker Pop. Dict. Austral. Slang 56 Posh, do the, to spend lavishly, do something ‘in style’.

1976 ‘M. Innes’ Gay Phoenix viii. 121 He talked a kind of modified posh which, although impure to Povey's authentic U-type ear, was perfectly adequate to his own middling station.

1979 E. Cave Blood Bond i. iii. 35 Charles's penchant for the grand—the ‘posh’ as Tom would have called it.

1981 E. V. Cunningham Case of Sliding Pool (1982) xi. 126 Bel-Air, a neighborhood with a little more posh and perhaps a good deal more money than Beverley Hills.

1998 Daily Tel. 16 May (Mag.) 53/3 This is no everyman [Millennium] Dome: the galleries are a celebration of posh.

1919 War Slang in Athenæum 22 Aug. 791/2 To ‘posh up’ was to make oneself look as smart as possible.

1932 D. L. Sayers Have his Carcase xv. 197 I don't get time to posh myself up of a morning.

1959 Oxf. Mail 1 June 3/6 I knew most of that stuff has been stolen; I wanted to posh up my old car.

1967 R. Mackay House & Day 30 He was poshed up. That meant..a trip to the town.

1975 J. McClure Snake iii. 45 Who goes to the trouble to posh himself up for the postman?

1990 Weekend Austral. 2 June (Weekend Review) 10/4 For years he's been content to provide supercilious cameos for the likes of Arthur, poshing up the most awful pictures.

2004 Future Music May 65/2 A velocity sensitivity knob and a built-in chorus unit that has no controls but nonetheless does a pretty job of ‘poshing up’ the overall sound.

1957 Listener 7 Nov. 739/1 A device to enable you to ‘write posh’, as it were. You look up the ‘vulgar’ words, and against them you find the more elegant.

1961 P. Strevens Papers in Lang. (1965) xi. 130 The recent popularity of My Fair Lady led to another legend, that of phonetics as a system of teaching people to ‘speak posh’.

1972 ‘M. Innes’ Open House ii. 20 A crowd of electricians might well take him for a cunning crook talking posh.

1990 A. Duff Once were Warriors vi. 68 I don't think she had a Maori upbringing. Nah, that's what I heard too that she was bought [sic] up posh.

2000 K. Nwajiaku in C. Newland & K. Sesay IC3 416 The product of a grammar school and university education, I spoke posh—‘as if I had something stuck up my nose’.