Posh means elegant, expensive and high quality: a posh hotel, posh restaurants. In British English it also means upper-class: a posh accent, she's very posh. The tone depends on the speaker: it can be admiration, or gentle teasing about snobbery.
Could you drop posh into a text?
Write a short message — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
a posh hotel / accent; posh restaurants; look / sound posh
- The café looks posh, but you can still arrive in walking boots.
- She used a posh accent for the character in the play.
- We passed several posh restaurants on the way to the station.
What changed
First versionThis hotel is more posher than the one we stayed in last year.
RevisionThis hotel is posher than the one we stayed in last year.
English has two ways to compare, -er and more, and learners often use both at once: more posher. One is enough: posher or more posh. For a short word like posh, posher is the usual choice.
Polite is about manners. Posh is about money and class. Fancy means elaborate or stylish, with no class meaning. In neutral writing: luxurious or upscale.
Your turn
Choose the correct comparative: This restaurant is ___ than the café next door.
Show the answer
posher — The -er ending already makes posh comparative, so adding more creates a double comparative. Posher is correct.
Describe an expensive place and a detail of its interior or service that makes it feel fancy.
The lounge looked posh, with fresh flowers on every table and velvet chairs.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.