He is best remembered as the ultimate source and inspiration for author Nancy Mitford's "U and non-U" forms of behaviour and language usage as class indicators.
He also attended Balliol College, University of Oxford after winning a Henry Skynner Scholarship in Astronomy in 1925, however he transferred to the School of English Language and Literature and graduated B.A.
[citation needed] In an article published in 1954, he coined the terms "U" and "non-U", on the differences that social class makes in English language usage.
[5][6] On 11 July 1933, Ross married Elizabeth Stefanyja Olszewska (12 May 1906 – 20 April 1973), daughter of a Warsaw-based Polish father, Maciej Bronislaw Wacław Olszewski, and English mother, Ada Ethel Briggs.
[10][11] The couple had one son, Alan Wacław Padmint Ross[7] (born 1934);[citation needed] the marriage ended with her death in 1973.