This is the second time that I will post an acronym that isn’t really an acronym (the first being “TIP”). The story commonly told is that wealthy passengers would book ship berths “Port Out, Starboard Home.” I’ve heard and read that the advantage to changing sides of the ship was to be in the shade both directions or because the views were better in some circumstances. Regardless, the word was being used long before the acronym craze began. There are several competing ideas as to the origin of the word. It apparently is thought to have been used as English slang. I decided the most interesting possible origin was that Edward FitzGerald had a fisherman friend named Murray Posh, and he was described as a “swell in an 1892 novel.” Apparently posh then began to be substituted for swell.