The Dictionary of Posh: Incorporating the Fall and Rise of the Pails-Hurtingseaux Family

This is a right royal comedy of errors. Hidden within normal English is a separate language still spoken by those born with silver spoons in their mouths. It's called Posh. A word of English can be spelt the same but mean something completely different in Posh. If you say the word "Mention" in English, people will understand "Remark upon;" but in Posh this means a large house. Say "Ace" and speakers of Posh will think you are referring to a cold thing one's butler puts in one's G&T. This book will help you learn Posh, often with side-splitting consequences. To aid rapid mastery, helpful examples of the various words in the dictionary are given in context. These helpful examples collectively add up to a story within the dictionary— The Fall and Rise of an Important Family— the sorry saga of riches, ruin and redemption that this book really is.

Hugh Kellett studied languages at Oxford and has been playing around with words in London advertising agencies most of his life. He is the author of Glitzch!  Hugh Kellett studied languages at Oxford and has been playing around with words in London advertising agencies most of his life. The humorous potential of the English language, this mishmash of the tongues of our invaders, its crazy spellings, rich nuances and punny possibilities have become his abiding passion. His first book Glitzch! took a word-based technology theme: the hilarious and often alarmingly perceptive rewriting of British history with deliberate wrong autocorrects, and this earned him many plaudits as a modern wit and wordsmith. Now with The Dictionary of Posh (Incorporating the Lamentable Tale of the Fall and Rise of an Important Family) he turns his wordsmithery to something even more fundamental than history - to the English language itself - and more precisely the revelation and preservation of a rather exclusive version of it, Posh. The result is a restoration comedy of rumbustious proportions, and a book that will have you laughing out loud. Hugh lives in Falmouth, Cornwall, with his waif.