Acronymble acroquick

Sometimes what begins as an acronym becomes a word, and several today come from a recently purchased (at a thrift store) book entitled “The Book of Totally Useless Information”, written by Don Voorhees (Barnes & Noble, NY, 1993). The words are posh, scuba and snafu. In keeping with today’s theme, I will henceforth refer to the book by its acronym, BOTUI.

Here’s what BOTUI says about posh:

During the Victorian era, the British Empire was at its apex, with colonies all around the globe….

India was a popular destination for the wealthy British traveler. The only practical and luxurious way to get to India was aboard a cruise ship. The journey from London to Bombay or Calcutta was a long one. Ships had to follow the west coast of Africa down around the Cape of Good Hope and up the east coast of Africa toward India. Much of the trip was through hot, humid, tropical climates.

These ships may have been well-appointed, but the invention of air-conditioning
was far off, and the only cool air one might expect was from ocean breezes and fans. Cabins tended to be hot and stuffy, so opening the portholes was the only way to get ventilation. On the trip out, the portholes on the port side of the ship faced land, and on the trip home the portholes on the starboard side faced the land. Portholes facing land were considered more desirable for ventilation, shade, shelter from bad weather, and viewing purposes. British civil servants traveling to India on the Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company line supposedly started this
trend in cabin reservations.

Thereafter, it became trendy for the wealthy to pay extra for the privilege of staying in portside cabins on the way out and starboard cabins on the trip home. The acronym P.O.S.H. (port out, starboard home) was stamped on their baggage and
eventually evolved into the word “posh,” which came to mean elegant or fashionable.

Unfortunately, according to etymonline.com, while the first occurrence of posh is from 1918 and might have the origin that is included in the book, the word appeared before the story did. It was used as long ago as 1830 by thieves to refer to money, at that time referring to the half-penny and could have come to English from the Romanian word for half, which is posh. By 1890 it had become a synonym for “dandy”, and I would think the leap was small from the thieves’ word for money to application to those well-dressed targets of their thievery.

BOTUI also mentions scuba, which began as the acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus in 1952, and snafu, which it says is “short for an old army saying.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word snafu came to English in 1941, as a U.S. military slang, another acronym - this one for situation normal, all f***ed up, and according to the OED the word is "conveying the common soldier's laconic acceptance of the disorder of war and the ineptitude of his superiors."

I love the British delicacy and stoic attitude conveyed so well by that description.