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These are so good. I am envious.

Thanks DD!

Mike, wish I still lived 5 minutes away from the Garage in Capital Hill. (Literally right on the other side of SU.) Would gladly have met you there for pool that night and bought a round of drinks in her memory.

-Jeff

Thanks Jeff, I would have liked that! You're a good friend.

Ah . . . The Wire.

Thanks for the mention of Paul Elkman in your last post. I found an article about him from 2002 that is really interesting, and I also put in a request for one of his books at the library. I’m hoping it will help my writing because I have a hard time showing and not telling emotion.

But it makes me wonder . . . how do you read someone’s face in after they’ve had their Botox treatment?

Poke Scott in the tummy and tell him that he should give you back your IM.
Tell him it’s research.
I don’t know, maybe try out some of your new lying techniques to see if you can come up with a good enough story to convince Scott to do that one thing for you…
I’m not sure, you think of something. You’re the one who tells stories for a living.

oh yes. that clears everything up!

The Wire…ah, perfection…but too often, too sad. I still miss some we lost seasons ago…

And I think they should have Omar do Honey Nut Cheerio commercials…

Emily

personally, i’m blaming maureen.

Yeah, I’m more inclined to believe that Maureen is too lazy to do her own research, but, then again, I don’t think you would do research for her so enthusiastically. So I’m just hoping it’s for a new sekrit book that no one know about just yet.

What? What? This has nothing to do with me! Though I am enjoying the vote of no-confidence I am getting from all sides.

I vote for the robot. But I think it should also know CPR so it can save lives.

Now, Justine, you can be honest. We all know you’re researching ways to use high-schoolers’ DNA to make zombies, and trying to learn how to lie convincingly so as not to let the zombie out of the bag too soon.

~Mary

Aw Justine, you can tell us about the zombies, we promise we won’t tell anyone, loyal fans and all that. And you should definitely poke Scott in the tummy, with a cookie, repeatedly, until he gives you back IM.

I know some people who could get you IM’ing without Scott being able to block it. It’ll cost ya, but you know, when you need it, you need it.

1. Justine…your post on Imitation of Life has caused me to scurry to the video store where I’ve purchased both. I owe you a response and have not forgotten. But, as you know, WORK must come first.

2. The Wire. I am unhappy. Very unhappy. [redacted for spoilerage-ness]

3. Glad Scott took away IM. I have weaned myself off of it, as well. IM is a time and brain suck that does very little towards making the work go faster.

4. [redacted for spoilerage-ness]

5. Since you’re so VERY good at it, can you talk for a minute about what makes for a good public reading of one’s work? How you decide which sections to read from…whether you feel its appropriate to make editorial revisions on the text you’ve chosen to read, etc. ?

Certainly, it must get easier over time, right?

Right?

Doselle: Let us not speak of The Wire right now.

5. Flattery will get you everywhere! I guess I could post about that. I am in hate for reading aloud. It sucketh. But general rule: keep it short. Ideally ten minutes or less. I prefer self-contained pieces. Though it can be fun to leave every on a giant cliff-hanger. Hehehehehe.

Why do you think reading aloud sucks so hard then, eh?

I mean, like, what could possibly suck about a performance anxiety-inducing exercise in public speaking before a crowd of stranger OR WORSE respected friends and acquaintances?

I mean, it doesn’t sound THAT bad, does it?

And no–let’s NOT speak of The Wire for the moment! The scene where Bunk puts on a corset and performs a scene from Pride and Prejudice seemed entirely out of context to me, but whatever!

Yowtch!

When I first started doing readings I was afraid no one or very few would show up, but now I look forward to that cause it means I don’t have to read and we can just chat casually (if there’s very few) or I can go home.

But mostly I don’t read at my appearances anymore. I tend to tell some anecdotes and then switch to Q & A. Is much more fun for me and the audience.

I really liked that scene with Bunk! I love anything Bunk does.

The best part about Bunk was his unexpected reaction to Detective Griggs as ‘Mister Darcy.

Who knew any human could make that kind of sound with a piece of black licorice and a tea cozy.

That was a tea cozy?

Yes! Yes! I know it looked very much like a miniature anteater, but it was almost certainly a tea cozy. I take my tea cozy collection quite seriously, so I would obviously be in a position to know about such things.

How Bunk was able to to fit it over Kima’s head with the teapot still inside it is another question entirely. Guess its really not just television.

Its HBO.

Oh, I have to go first again?!

I think the articles you might be remembering were tests conducted a couple of years in a row at Penn State University (as part of a Racial Relations class). At least, that was my memory of them and a quick Google around shows up a few dozen popular press articles on this, although I didn’t look long enough to find anything academic.

Was it the “DNA Test Gives Students Ethnic Shocks” article on this page?

Megan & Malcolm: I’m pretty sure the Penn State test is not what I’m remembering. The one thing I’m positive about is that it was a high school classroom, not a university.

you are doing very interesting research. you’ve got me curious!

i don’t know anything about this dna testing and race stuff, but i’d love to hear more.

this is totally random, but because you’re the (first) one who got me interested in this book…i got a copy of skin hunger today!!! i’m in the middle of another book, and then there will be the two sequels to read after that…but i’ll be reading it soon. i can’t wait!!

Dragonfly: Is serkrit. Top sekrit. But you’ll be able to read it September 2009. Unless I change my mind . . .

Enjoy Skin Hunger!

justine: i see you learned how to spell from mj. or did she learn from you??

september 2009. for my birthday! (oh my socks, i’ll be over 30.)

That spelling of secret pre-dates either one of us using it. I’m even pretty sure that spelling pre-dates LOLcats.

But, it is very likely she stole it from me. Since she has a tendency to do that. A lot.

Hmmm . . . I’m in California and haven’t heard about it in classrooms. However, l gave my husband a DNA test for his birthday last year. I got it from National Geographic online. They’re amassing a huge data base.

Like most, my white husband roots are in Africa.

What were his percentages?

Where on earth do you go to get your DNA tested?

(This preview-as-you-type feature is the best stuff on earth. :-D)

Camille, here’s where I got my husband’s DNA kit . . .
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

It’s a really easy test to take. And then you mail it in and they send you the results.

Justine, I’ll ask him where he’s put the results and try to find out the percents.

I wanted one of those DNA testing things for my 16th B-Day, but my parents thought it was too expensive.
I go to school in California, and I haven’t heard about that either, albeit, my school is quite crappy and poor.

In my race and racism class in college we watched a film that showed high school students doing an experiment like that. Basically they discovered that a kid from Mexico’s closest genetic match was from Poland (arbitrary examples though). I don’t remember what the film was called, but it looked relatively old.

And I want to say that it sounds like something David Suzuki would have covered on The Nature of Things, but I might be wrong about that.

Hi Justine,
Check out the resources for teachers on the companion website to the PBS doc, African American Lives 2 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/teachers/rationalizing_race.html

It also links to another PBS companion website, Race: The Power of Illusion.
http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm
Hope this is helpful. Ariel

hey justine, i hadn’t heard about this either, but the ladeez at racialicious would know if anyone would.

http://www.racialicious.com/

well, in my science class the teacher paid for three randomly selected kids to have their DNA tested and anylyzed (the test kits are not cheap) but we’re using the data to learn about DNA not race.
~Moose-la

Hey, Justine, pretty sure this isn’t what you remembered, because it’s recent, but here is a link to an article about a project at a St. Louis school:

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NEWS01/802170397

“As the results of the school’s “Discover Your Roots” project began to trickle in earlier this month, the 40 students and teachers participating in the human genome program began comparing notes the moment the school’s computers spit out the results of their DNA tests.”

Hope that helps, even if it wasn’t what you were looking for…

emily

Justine, sadly my Hubby can’t find his DNA test information. However, I can recall that he’s part European, part African, and part martian.

i’m not good at linking to stuff, but i went to google and put DNA+Race…and a bunch of stuff came up.

Re: the thieving manager: nah, he confessed before taking it.

I can tell when my uncle is lying because of the face he makes and if what he is saying doesn’t make any sense. He might tell you something to see if you will belive him, and then he laughs when you really do belive him.

I can tell when my friend lies because she tries to sound likes she is older than she is and knows what she is talking about.

The secret to lying is to make the lie as close to the truth as possible.

If you don’t believe your own lie, no one else will believe you either. Haha, that sounds terrible coming from me………but I don’t lie very often.

I was required to take a polygraph a long time ago. I was the manager of a retail store. There had been an employee that worked for me who did not like me and accused me of things. Some items had turned up missing and she accused me of that as well.

I was innocent and when asked to take the test, of course did so willingly. I was told what some of the questions would be on a general level. I learned that some questions that were going to be asked had nothing to do with the missing inventory but about something else I was being accused of. Although I was innocent of it at the time, when I was much younger and stupid, I had done these things.

I find that if there is some truth in the lie, then you can get away with certain things. For example, if you are asked, “Have you ever taken anything from the store without paying for it.” If I had, by simply saying yes, I have taken things like paper clips, office supplies, etc. you are telling the truth without telling the whole truth.

I don’t know if any of that makes sense but I did pass the test and I was innocent of what I had been accused of. And the missing inventory ended up being located in the shipping and receiving room.

Purely as a matter of interest, those people who say “I can always tell when X is lying” - how do you know?

Couldn’t they have lied on occasions that you didn’t find out about?

I’m an excellent liar. I’m not proud of it, no, I am. Its just so easy… The secret, you ask? Too many people send off signals while lying. They look in the direction of thier dominant hand, they fidgit, twitch, sweat, stutter. Don’t do that!

Be yourself! If you weren’t lying, how would you respond? Do that. If you need to cry, think of something sad. Like that lady who asked you for money to buy food. Or the time your dog was run over by a car. Cry real tears!

If you’re supposed to be happy, think up one of those jokes that always set you off for ages!

Lying is powerful though. It can be used for good… or EVIL!!!!! Good: “She’ll be late to class, Mr. so and so. Her locker is jammed.” okay. Thats sort of evil. Evil: “She’ll be late to class Mr so and so. She’s making her daily trip to the bathroom. Yeah, she goes everyday after lunch.”

Not that I would ever do that. Seriously.

i knew a compulsive liar once–had a brief relationship with him actually. when i asked him why he lied, he said he just couldn’t stop himself. he had severe anxiety attacks and i think he just suffered from the need to keep everyone around him happy–to tell them what they wanted to hear. his heart would speed up and he his breathing would accelerate and he’d just open his mouth and it would come out of its own accord. at least that is what he told me. which was very likely a lie now that i think of it.

i think it all stemmed from the need to avoid confrontation, whatever the cost.

don’t know if this helps at all.

oh and i could usually tell when he was lying–mostly because things didn’t fit together–like the fact that his mother died three times and was very much alive when i called her after that.

Years ago, I worked for the first bank in this area (Atlanta, Georgia, US) to put locations in grocery stores. After training, they made me a “floater,” so I went to whichever branch in my area didn’t have enough people for my shift.

Apparently, they didn’t think through the security so very well, and there was a series of break-ins in which someone went through the dropped ceiling into the bank branches to steal money after-hours (the grocery stores were open 24-7). They suspected an “inside job,” and I’d worked at every branch that was hit, so I was asked to take a polygraph test.

I didn’t realize at the time that my normal blood pressure is quite low. For some reason, that and the fact that I was completely calm (I knew I didn’t have anything to do with the robberies) screwed up the test - there was no real difference between me saying one of their “test lies” and saying, truthfully, that I knew nothing about the robberies other than what little I’d heard at work. The guy doing the test got really mad at started yelling at me for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately for him, it was obvious to me that he presented no physical threat, and I’d been yelled at (and worse) by a 6′4″ Marine for most of my life. I didn’t freak out. When he told me to get the hell out of his office, I did. My manager told me later that the guy was certain I’d done SOMETHING wrong, but I had awfully good alibis for every time they’d asked me about. In fact, I’d been singing in front of an entire congregation during several of the robberies.

I figure it’s a really good thing that was before I took biofeedback training.

The most convincing liars I’ve ever known are those who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders. Whatever they’re saying is the absolute truth to them while they’re saying it.

As I recall, the culprits did have an accomplice in the bank, but it was someone much higher up the food chain that I was. I made a point of not knowing the combinations for the safe at any branch, since I wasn’t a regular at any of them, but there was at least one person who had access to all of them.

I find that the best way to make a lie believable is to believe it yourself, at least for the moment. Act as if it WERE true. It’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself that something is true, particularly when you are trying to convince someone ELSE that it’s true.

Also, if someone thinks your story doesn’t make sense, instead of coming up with a complicated explaination, act as confused as they are.
Pretending not to understand the question is a good way to buy time to think of an answer.

I feel dirty.

Tell the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies….
and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Anon

the secret to lying is to actually, not lie at all.
you tell the truth, but you don’t tell the whole truth.
so, there are always things left up in the air. this causes people to make assumptions, and nearly always, their assumption is the most likely one. and if you’ve told your story correctly, then you won’t get into any trouble, because they’ll be assuming the best.

it never fails. and if for some odd reason, you do fail, and someone accuses you of lying, you can say (without lying) that you weren’t lying, you just didn’t tell them that certain aspect of the story.

for the record, i’ve always heard that polygraph tests are completely unreliable and easy to fool besides. this is why i absolutely detest that stupid show moment of truth. the whole effing thing is a lie. some guy is probably sitting there in a dark room with two buttons to push, deciding when to say “true” and when to say “false,” and none of it has anything to do with what the contestant actually says. and that’s only one reason why i hate that stupid show. end soapbox.

in high school, i lied and sneaked around all the time, and i usually got away with it. i learned a couple things from this. one, if you’re generally trustworthy and people know that there are certain lines you won’t cross, then you can easily get away with other, less “serious” things. two, even if you know you’re lying, you can still pull it off as long as you feel that the lie is justified. i rarely felt guilty about lying back then. but everything flipped in college. i stopped feeling justified, so i stopped lying. for me, that seems to be the key. it also helps to be able to come up with relatively believable stories on the spot. if you have to stop and think, that’s the first and most obvious clue that you’re not telling the truth.

on the opposite end of things, i’m utterly crap at reading other people. it doesn’t matter if they’re lying or pissed or whatever, i only seem to see what’s on the surface. i’m the same way when reading “great” literary works. i never see the underlying meaning of either one until someone else points it out to me. hmm, maybe that’s the fairy i need.

I think I’m a convincing liar, but I think that since I’m a 90% trusting person, that when I lie, people just expect it to be truth. I’m not proud that I’m good at it, really, I’m not. It makes me feel horrible.

John Green wrote a list of “Things I am good at” in which he listed sitting down and telling lies. He said that’s why he became a writer.

So there you have it - ask your mate!

On a more practical note - a good lie (for good - read convincing) should always have some truth attached. Then if ever found out the author of the lie can claim they misunderstood the situation.
A good liar should have a great memory.

There’s an abstract on PubMed (here) in which a variety of people were asked to distinguish liars from nonliars. The only people to perform better than chance were Secret Service agents.

Thanks again, everyone. Some fabulous stuff here.

Jane Volker: I already did.

I think everyone has generally given good advice on how to be a successful liar, but I think the true key to getting away with a fib is picking your target carefully. Because really, the worst liar I’ve ever met is also the person who pulled the wool over my eyes most successfully–and he was able to do that in large part because he told *such* bald-faced lies that I couldn’t believe they were actually lies. This is a kid who could have been standing over a corpse with a bloody knife in his hands and claimed that he had *no idea* how those stab wounds got there. Even if you told him that you’d *seen* him do it, he’d have told you you saw wrong. It was ridiculously unbelievable…which is why it worked. I couldn’t believe that someone could lie that badly to my face and expect me to believe it; even if I’d seen him do something rotten with my own eyes, I started to doubt what I’d seen.

But more importantly, I *wanted* to believe him–which brings me to the moral of my story: all you really need to be a successful liar is a gullible target–or, more accurately, someone who *wants* to believe you. If you’ve cheated on your girlfriend, you can probably get away with lying to her about it because she doesn’t *want* to believe that you would do that to her. You have to figure out what someone wants to hear, and then you have to say that. It doesn’t matter how crappy your performance is, how completely it contradicts all available evidence; people will believe it because the alternative means looking like an ass. And everyone hates feeling stupid.

I am shame-faced and blushing. But my excuse is that I only found your blog TODAY and I hadn’t quite read back as far as 2006.
Brilliant interview. Very entertaining. I’m always impressed by a teller of tall tales mostly because I can’t lie convincingly unless I think the person I’m speaking to needs me to. In fact I can look totally guilty when I’m telling the whole truth. It’s a terrible affliction. Maybe people fall into two groups: good liars and good confessors.
It’s a bit depressing to realise you are one of the latter.

Don’t pause. Just GO. The best liar I know (who happens to be ELEVEN YEARS OLD) just spins stories out of nowhere so fast I can’t tell which are true and which aren’t - and I know he’s a pathological liar. And the times I’ve been most convincing in my own lies are the times I didn’t even know I was going to lie until I said it.

Jane Volker: I am shame-faced and blushing.

Don’t be silly. Why would you know about an interview conducted almost two years ago? I posted the link cause I thought you might be interested and because it confirms your supposition that Mr Green does indeed know a vast deal about lying.

Came across some news articles about polygraphs and lie detection just today that might interest your research.

Showing the inaccuracy of polygraphs:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044177/

Preliminary info about brainscans and lies:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21552376/

I do a lot of ferreting out lies in my day job work and I have to say, so much of detecting lies is what I call the internal tuning fork - it’s just this “ping” I feel inside sometimes when someone says something - sometimes it’s that the word choice is odd, or the voice fluctuated and sometimes it’s just instinct. But when I start pulling at the story, some common things fall apart.

First, as a caveat on all this, some people are such good liars they actually convince themselves the lie is truth - they are almost undetectable, because there won’t really be any tells. The “tells” - eye contact, pupils, breathing, pitch, pulse, blood flow, etc… - none of that will show if the person is: (1) believing the lie; or, (2) psychotic/compulsive.
Now, for the rest of us, there are tells. And those tells are different for everyone.

Many times, the lie is told differently than the truth - with someone who is generally fluid in their delivery, sometimes the lie stumbles or a word choice is off. If the person sometimes hunts for words, sometimes the lie is too well-rehearsed or flowing.

Many, many times I say the truth is in the pauses - and in the deflections. When someone doesn’t answer a question fully, or directly, I usually zero in on the deflection. I find with many people the information I need to know most is in the pauses between their answers.

But, all that said, there are some good liars, and those people you only trip up in examining the details and seeing if every facet of the lie can be proven true- usally some small detail, maybe even as small as time or place, falls away, and then the story unravels. Becuase (generally) people don’t lie about little things unless they are trying to hide bigger things. So, sometimes someone lies about some stupid thing, and that derails an otehrwise well-concocted lie.

There are some great articles on jury seletion out there, and they are studies in psychology and reading people. Some of that technique would work for detecting liars, too.

Here are some pretty basic sites talking about some of the techiniques and tests (although, they may be too shallow, if you’ve already been researching):

http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/liars/

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/bob8.asp

What it comes down to very much is focussing on the person totally and watching for the thing that makes you wonder if the person is lying - the loose thread to unravel the lie is there. Even over the phone, even in written letters, the thing that makes you pause and wonder, to hesitate, your instincts are picking up on something…so pull at it and see what falls apart.

Just some quick thoughts… emily

[…] of you have been emailing to ask why I wants to know about lying and DNA testing and race that I feel I should offer some kind of explanation, or several […]

Reflecting some of the other posts, I was taught to always make my lie part true. If I’m taking a day off work to attend a funeral, include the aunt that died a month ago, even though the funeral was on a weekend and required no days off work. If you make it partially true, you can feed off that section of the truth and let it carry over into the not-so-true part.

Moderately related: a friend of mine has no adrenal gland, and has to take adrenaline just to keep his heart beating regularly. He was falsely accused of stealing by a grocery store, and placed in a small room with many people yelling at him. The fact that he never got excited, raised his voice, or freaked out was held against him, though it’s pretty imnpossible for him to get upset, or at least manifest it physically. He was eventually allowed to leave, and never went back.

Don’t know if this is still helpful, but I thought I’d post it anyway, since I don’t think anyone’s said this already

I don’t often lie, but when I need to - cough cough, ‘needed’ to go to a Harry Potter convention but told uni my cousin was getting married - I make up all the information around the lie to support it before I tell them, littering it freely with the truth and getting all the details fixed in my mind. Then when I have to tell the lie, I only tell them a tiny bit more than they asked for - not so much as to make them suspicious - and then if/when they ask me further questions (like, so where is your cousin getting married?) I can quite happily and confidently answer, and give the same answer to everyone (in the church near m grandparents’ house, so my grandma doesn’t have to travel too far with her sciatica) and not get caught out later.

Of course, this takes a bit of prep time, but not a huge amount. It depends on the extent of the lie. Usually I can do it in a couple of minutes, and then I repeat it to myself in my mind to fix it there.

I have never been caught out.

ritsy
swanky
preppy

off the hook

snotty
fancy-schmancy, but mostly if the speaker is Jewish

but honestly, if your protagonist is anywhere near NYC, “one of those obnoxious private schools” should get the job done.

I don’t see “off the hook” going with exclusive, expensive private school, honestly. I always thought “off the hook” referred to something cool and wild and expensive, not the exclusive old-money private schools.

If Posh Spice has made it in America, then I think you can use the word “posh” in your manuscript. It does the best job of conveying what you mean.

Oh. Um, well, I’m USian, born and raised, and I wouldn’t have thought “posh” was out of place. But, I pick up a lot of words from books without knowing it, which leaves me speaking a slightly different (and very mish-mashed) dialect than most.

I think Gina Black’s suggestion of “preppy” would be the next closest thing, although that gets used an awful lot. (”ritzy” and “swanky” have slightly different, though similar, connotations for me.)

~Mary

I dunno that “posh” doesn’t work. We said that, growing up in the midwest, though it’s true that a teenager would’ve been more likely to say “stuck-up”, “snotty”, “swanky” or “preppy”. And we often used “fancy-schmancy” in my family, and I never knew a Jewish person until high school, and then it was just the one girl. I had no idea that was a Jewish saying.

“La-di-dah” is another one, though that’s for a person, not a thing.

“Hoity-toity.”

I’d personally see nothing wrong with the word “posh”, but I try not to speak normal USian. WHOA, WE CAN USE CAPITAL LETTERS? *abuse*
Here, private schools are already associated with snobbishness, but you could just italicize the “private”. Oh, she goes to a private school.

i have heard “posh” before. i don’t know that you’d be that far off using it. although, i don’t think of it as having especially negative connotations. and the only reason i ever found out what it meant was b/c of posh spice.

but also:
-snobby
-stuck-up
-fancy schmancy (maybe i’m weird, but i use it)
-ritzy (also doesn’t have especially negative feeling, to me)

(I originally posted this on the LJ syndication, but I found out you don’t actually get those, sorry)
“Fancy schmancy” is something people I know, especially in my family, use a lot. “Hoity toity” is another, but not used as often.

I wouldn’t use “classy” because it generally means something well-refined or well-mannered, not just rich.

Some others you might want to think about: snotty; snobby; stuck-up; preppy

I’m from the midwest and the term we used was ‘chi chi’ (pronounced shee-shee).

It’ll also depend on context: I think “posh” is much more of a general-use word, whereas a person can’t be ritzy and a thing can’t be a snob.

There’s also the question of whether you mean patrician-type of upscale, or obnoxious-display type of upscale. The latter is definitely flashy, but the former is not.

(I love big letters! I’ll take all the letter-embiggenation I can get!!)

I second, third, whatever, preppy.

Where’s the story set? If it’s in an upper end neighborhood, you could name the suburb and add elite to the end of it.

I am of course stealing this from the tv version of Gossip Girl. The second question is how much snobbery is there? If it isn’t the cool place to be (which I always assumed posh implied), elite may not be the right word, preppy would be closer, as that’s more of a degenerative term.

I think I just made that word up. Either that, or it’s spelled horribly wrong.

In the Pacific Northwest, going with Sean’s suggestion or just using preppy should work just fine…dialect varies from region to region, though, so it really depends on where in the US your protag is coming from.

I don’t hear a USian saying “posh”. “Fancy” (with or without “schmancy” might be your best bet.

blueblood? rich-ass? money? (as in the verb)

“posh” is totally american. i heard it growing up in the midwest, too. my dad used to use it. the word itself is more … posh than “fancy” or “swanky.” the latter two always have a bit of a sneer in them, but “posh,” while self-conscious, and sometimes ironic, isn’t mean.

“classy” is entirely approving, without any humor or irony. and it has a tinge of the low class about it, i.e. class conscious middle to upper middle folks wouldn’t use it.

snobby, for sure.

Justine, I’d just use ‘fancy private school’ or possibly ‘fancy-ass prep school’, depending on the speaker. Speaking as someone who went to one, but had friends who didn’t.

We say ‘Beckham’ now.

That’s a very Beckham school.

‘Posh’ is definitely the wrong word for an American teenager to use. ‘Swanky’ is more American, but teenagers are more likely to say ’stuck-up’ or ’snotty’ or ’snobby.’ Any one of those would, along with the words ‘private school,’ suggest expensive, as well.

I don’t know if this helps as I’m Canadian, not American, but I use “posh” and did as a teenager, too.

As a girl who went to a “posh” all-girls prep school in the US (specifically the Pasadena area of Los Angeles…which is very affluent), “preppy” is the word that got thrown around a lot (not used BY us prep girls, but given to us). I think “preppy” is the closest in connotation to “posh.”

However, I would second whoever “fancy-ass” as I’ve heard that one levelled at me too!

I’m an Australian who’s been living in the US for a few decades (so I’m not a teenager!). My guess for the closest equivalent in adult USian is “exclusive”, but that doesn’t sound like something a teenager would say.

Regional variation is much more common in the US than in Australia. I guess you’re left-coasters, so that would be a fine choice for a locale, as long as the story doesn’t involve people visiting from out of state.

My mother used to always say “tony.”
Posh doesn’t sound out of place to me, though.
“Moneyed” is probably what I’d use. “Swank” rather than swanky, I think. “Pretentious” might do you, too.

I am from Boston and Seattle, now New York.

P.S. My WASP grandmother was Granny. My Jewish one Grandma.

erm, yeah, definitely not posh. posh is a great word, but at least in my experience as a 23 year old girl from the northeast (though i have also lived in the south), no one says it.

i agree that preppy or fancy-ass are the most likely words for a teenager to use. i’ve heard some people say shi-shi, but like another poster said, i think that’s a midwestern thing. i can’t imagine any teenager, anywhere, ever, saying hoity-toity or fancy-shmancy. no offense.
the problem with the the states though, is that the speaker’s class, age, and location (and, arguably [cringe], her race/ethnic group) makes all the difference.

I think “ritzy” and “preppy” are still in use among USian teens; a kid who says “posh” around here would be accused of posing. “Private” in itals, or even “that super-expensive private school” would probably work, too…

Snooty!

“Preppy” is used mostly (where I live) to refer to a style, and depending on what kind of expensive the private school is, that might not apply. (Old money usually isn’t “preppy.” Also, where I live=Minnesota, in case you were wondering.) What I’d say probably isn’t helpful, as I am a basement-dwelling word-nerd, but fancy works.

“Posh” sounds wrong to me, though.

Also! I would just like to add, “fancy-shmancy” isn’t an exclusively Jewish thing. It does come from Yiddish syntax, but anyone can use it. I’m Jewish, but I never have, so.

Er, yeah. This whole comment could be summed up as “it depends on your character.”

Huh? Since when is “posh” not USian? I’m from Minnesota, too, and I’ve been using it since I was a teenager. Plus it really seems like the best word for what you’re going for.

hey! daphne unfeasible has a blog! hurray!

also, i think i’m sticking to lowercase, for old time’s sake. ’tis not really justine’s blog if the comments have caps.

i think posh is perfectly fine. I use it, I hear other people use it and i think plenty of teenagers would know what it means.

i see some suggestions of preppy, but I guess i don’t really see preppy fitting your definition.

but hey… that’s just me.

I’m in New York and we say “posh.” “Ritzy” would convey the same thing, I think, but it sounds vaguely old-fashioned, circa 1920. (I’ve heard “shi-shi” and “shi-shi-frou-frou” in suburban Connecticut, but more as a put-down.) “Swanky” (not “swank”) might have the same neutral connotation. Snooty, snobby/snobbish, snotty — these are all negative. “Exclusive” is a viable euphemism.

“Hoity-toity” is more like “uppity” in connoting an attitude that the person in question ostensibly has no right to: someone getting “above themselves.”

“Preppy” conveys more of a style of dress to me than a lifestyle or social sphere.

“Snooty” and “snot-nosed” are the words we used to describe the local prep school kids and their schools back when I was a teenage peasant. Also preppy, stuck-up and snobby.

Agree with the other commenters that “posh” would be believable. But “swanky” is also great.

and caaf is posting somewhere too! le hurray!

I like “fancy-ass prep school”.

Other people have already said it, but I’d vote for “swank”.

Snobby or snotty or ritzy

I think “posh” is fine. Second choice: preppy. I also like snobby and snooty. Fancy pants?

hmmm…..
well, i, as a sort of wierd person might use the term posh with my friends, joking or something.
alternatives…………
stuck-up? i also approve of preppy—it’s common term i use to describe my school of rich white kids.
i wouldn’t use hoity-toity or the like…i’d see it as more likely to say posh, at least with people i know.

I like several of the suggestions above: “preppy”, “snooty”, “stuck-up” (of people, not the school itself), “fancy” etc. But the one I would use is “rich”. “It must be so easy when you go to a rich private school . . .” etc.

I also like the letter-embiggening thing. Did I miss an announcement?

I’m with E. ‘Tony’. Only because I like the word…but does anyone under say, ooh, forty, use it?

Posh is a great word. “She’s a bit of posh”, for example. Like Jack’s almost-wife in 30 Rock. Sometimes pronounced with a hard ‘o’ for added silliness.

La-di-da always makes me think of Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. And that’s a whole other New York.

prep, preppy

Posh actually works well because of the situation you’re using it in. (LOL I just noticed I have capital letters again! I was like whaaat?!) But otherwise… prep, yeah, I guess.

im a “usian” teenager and i would
saw preppy loaded 9with cash) private school

say* not saw
sorry

i’m from california, and we’d either call it “rich”, “preppy”, “private”, or “those snobby bastards who think we’re from the ghetto”.

personally i’d go with “rich”.

swanky–but i’m from the stone age too.

p.s. i’m from nyc.

posh is fine! don’t listen to scott!

never heard anyone at school use swanky.. but stuck up, preppy, biotchy, snobby.. haha theres a place called snob hill where rich kids but it’s really knob hill

(15 yearold usian here:] )
CAPITOL LETTERS! lol

oh and the only time i’ve heard anyone say posh is if they are british.. or if someone is joking around and add a british accent

so i agree with scott.. maybe just people in the south don’t say it

preppy- or maybe, full of J.A.P.s (Jewish American Princess)?

I go to an all- girls posh private school… I’ve never heard fancy-ass used, but I like it, and if in the Upper East side, those Upper East Side brats?

preppy would work, as would private-school girl, rich kid, or upper-east-sidey.

also, nooooo! i love this haven of all-lowercase. it’s so pretty!

As a US teen I believe posh isn’t very common generally it has the connotation to refer to the UK, cause of those spicy chicks.

I back up the suggestion “preppy”.

Love your blog btw.

I personally don’t see anything wrong with posh……

and I live in Texas. But what do I know. :/

so. did you run out of room for all the capitals you’ve been stealing?

Posh doesn’t work for me, especially if it is a teenager speaking.

Preppy works. Ritzy is okay, but I’m not sure if a teen would say this. Off the hook is nice (and current) but only if the protag thinks the place is great in addition to expensive. But my favorite is j’s ‘fancy-ass.’ I think it would work well from a teen perspective, and it seems very USian.

Snooty

when i lived in the us, one of my jobs was working in a mental hospital for teens. it was fun,especially when i broke my leg and let a bunch of kids hopped up and thorazine and caffiene paint my cast… but anyway, they used the term “posh” quite often, usually with hoity toity hand gestures and noses in air and very faux snooty voices. it was primarily a derogatory thing. as in “of course we will never see britney or lindsey here; we’re just not special and posh and all that crap.” but in my never ending quest to be helpful, i looked in the roget’s dinosaurus, er thesaurus. for posh it said “chic, classy, deluxe, elegant, exclusive, grand, fashionable, high class, lah-di-dah, luxury, modish, opulent, rich, ritzy, smart, swank, swanky, swish, and trendy” i like lah-di-dah.

and i stubbornly refuse to use capitals here.

woot for lowercase!

I say posh and I’m American. Then again, I also choose my words very carefully and consider each and every word to have a different connotation and definition.