or () is a pejorative Russian word for amorality, vulgarity, a lack of originality, and/or bad taste. It has been cited as an example of a so-called untranslatable word, because there is no exact single-word English equivalent. It carries much cultural baggage in Russia and has been discussed at length by various writers.
It is derived from the adjective (), which may describe a negative human character trait, a manmade object, or an idea.
Svetlana Boym defines poshlost as "obscenity and bad taste". She says:
It has also been defined as "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity".
In his novels, Turgenev "tried to develop a heroic figure who could, with the verve and abandon of a Don Quixote, grapple with the problems of Russian society, who could once and for all overcome , the complacent mediocrity and moral degeneration of his environment". Dostoevsky applied the word to the Devil; Solzhenitsyn, to Western-influenced young people.
D. S. Mirsky was an early user of the word in English in writing about Gogol; he defined it as "'self-satisfied inferiority,' moral and spiritual".
Another literary treatment is Fyodor Sologub's novel The Petty Demon. It tells the story of a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. James H. Billington said of it:
Vladimir Nabokov made the term more widely known in his book on Gogol, where he romanized it as "" (punningly: "" + "lust"). , Nabokov explained, "is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive. A list of literary characters personifying will include... Polonius and the royal pair in Hamlet, Rodolphe and Homais from Madame Bovary, Laevsky in Chekhov's 'The Duel', Joyce's Marion [Molly] Bloom, young Bloch in Search of Lost Time, Maupassant's 'Bel Ami', Anna Karenina's husband, and Berg in War and Peace". Nabokov also listed:
In a New York Times piece about Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom he considered an exemplar of , Nabokov further characterized it as being "cheap," "sham," "smutty," "highfalutin," and "in bad taste."
Nabokov often targeted in his own work; the Alexandrov definition above of "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity" refers to the character of M'sieur Pierre in Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading.