Posh = of good class.

Alas this will cause further puzzlement, for as far as I can see, in the USA and Australia class = wealth, which is not the case in the UK.

Class is the product of breeding, family background, education (public school, ie private boarding school: prep school = private boarding school for the under-13), accent above all things (think Prince Charles, Brian Sewell, although Scottish accent is allowable if you can demonstrate aristocratic genesis), and all the things like knowing which cultery to use and which ornaments are valuable antiques and which are not (similar to "taste").

If your landed estates and your antique furniture have been handed down to you over many generations you are likely to be posh.

As Clarke, the old Tory grandee, once said of Michael Heseltine "He is the sort of chap who bought all his own furniture" - ie he was a parvenu.



Which is why "Posh Spice" was a total misnomer - she was jumped up middle class (indeed perhaps lower middle class) who happened to have a moderately rich father.

Similarly the "taste" element enabled courtiers to say with absolute truth of Sarah Ferguson that she was "Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar"

You can be of good class yet poor.