Port Out, Starboard Home

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The most likely explanation for the mysterious origins of ‘posh’ is that it was either a conversion (noun to adjective) from the older word referring to a coin or, perhaps more likely, the slang term for a dandy (which itself may have been derived from the coin term). Port Out, Starboard Home — (or Port Outward, Starboard Home) is a phrase popularly believed to provide the etymology for the word . More recent examples include the brand name Adidas, named after company founder Adolf "Adi" Dassler but falsely believed to be an acronym for "All Day I Dream About Sport"; [17] [ full citation needed] The word Wiki, said to stand for "What I Know Is", [18] but in fact derived from the Hawaiian phrase wiki-wiki meaning "fast"; [19] or Yahoo! Similarly, the distress signal SOS is often believed to be an abbreviation for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" but was chosen because it has a simple and unmistakable Morse code representation– three dots, three dashes, three dots, sent without any pauses between characters. Indeed, acronyms were rare before the First World War, when the word AWOL (short for ‘absent without leave’ or ‘absent without official leave’) was first used.

Before ships had rudders on their centrelines, they were steered with a steering oar at the stern of the ship on the right hand side of the ship, because more people are right-handed. A large part of this book retells such mythic tales and also tries to find and explain the true stories behind them. An Anglo-Saxon record of a voyage by Ohthere of Hålogaland used the word "bæcbord" ("back-board") for the left side of a ship. FitzGerald was one of several Victorian poets who translated the ancient Persian poem The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into English. CANOE, the Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything, doesn't really exist, but the number of these folk myths makes it seem as though they do.So it’s important that we have stories that explain things, but it’s much less important that the stories we tell are verifiably true. To keep port and starboard straight, remember that sailors use stars to point them in the right direction after they have left port . Forget your lefts and rights, British Rowing can officially confirm that ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ are the terms to use when rowing!

A normal acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of the words of a phrase, [2] such as radar from " radio detection and ranging". If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology.

Once again, this ‘posh’ was a noun rather than the more familiar adjective we use today, although, interestingly, this ‘posh’ referred to a dandy: a well-dressed, and often well-off, man about town. An example of a backronym as a mnemonic is the Apgar score, used to assess the health of newborn babies. In the film it is sung when "Grandpa Potts" (played by Lionel Jeffries) is being carried away in his outhouse.