Etymologically
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Post

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Pronunciation

Forms

Post f (genitive Post, plural (rare) Posten)[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian posta (“relay station”), taken over together with the institution at the end of the 15th century.[2][3][4] The Italian word meant a fixed place, the station where riders and horses were changed on the routes of the early postal service.[2][3][5] It goes back to Latin posita (“placed, fixed”), the feminine of positus, the past participle of pōnō (“to put, place”).[3][4] The Duden dictionaries see behind it the Late Latin phrase posita statio or posita mansio, a fixed stopping place, and the Duden dictionary and the Grimms' dictionary also reckon with the influence of French poste.[5][6][7]

The same word is Dutch post, English post, Swedish post and Icelandic póstur.[2] Posten goes back to the same Latin participle.[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Early New High German Post meant the public conveyance for letters and travellers, with its couriers, carriages and horses (1494); in the 16th century it also came to mean the post station and a message or piece of news.[3] The Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch has its first record from 1495, and Postmeister is recorded already in 1489.[4][8]

Semantic evolution

The first institutions of this kind were set up in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries by the Pope and by smaller princes to carry news and letters quickly by mounted messengers, along routes divided into stations kept by a postmaster.[5] Transferred from the station to the whole service, the word reached France at the end of the 15th century and Germany at about the same time.[5][7] In 1516 Franz von Taxis, at the request of Emperor Maximilian I, set up the first regular postal connection, between Vienna and Brussels.[7] As the service developed, so did the present meaning.[2]

The old sense “news” lives on in phrases such as schlimme Post and in Hiobspost “bad news”.[8][3] Several related words came in with the institution: Postillon about 1560 from Italian, Postkutsche in Stieler (1691), the official Postkarte and postlagernd, a rendering of French poste restante, in 1875.[8] The Latin formula per postam “by post” is first found in 1523.[4] Elektronische Post was formed after English electronic mail.[6]

Timeline

  • 1489 – Postmeister is recorded.[8]
  • 1494 – Post names the public conveyance for letters and travellers.[3]
  • 1516 – Franz von Taxis sets up the regular postal line between Vienna and Brussels.[7]
  • 1523 – Per postam appears in the Latin of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum.[4]
  • 16th century – The senses “post station” and “message, news” appear.[3]
  • c. 1560 – Postillon is borrowed from Italian.[8]
  • 1691 – Stieler records Postkutsche.[8]
  • 1875 – Postkarte and postlagernd become official terms.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The postal service: the public service that carries letters, parcels and money transfers, and in places local passenger transport.[6][1]
  2. A post office (Postamt).[6][1]
  3. The mail delivered by this service or to be sent through it: Heute ist keine Post für dich gekommen.[6][1]
  4. (colloquial) The delivery of the mail.[6]
  5. (historical) A mail coach (Postkutsche);[6] (technical) a post bus.[6]
  6. (dated) A message, a piece of news.[6][8]
  7. An item or amount in an account, a Posten.[6][9]

Word family

  • postalisch
  • Postamt
  • Postkarte
  • postwendend
  • Postauto
  • Postfach
  • postfrisch
  • Posthorn
  • Postkutsche
  • Postleitzahl
  • Postillon
  • Hiobspost
  • postlagernd

Usage notes

The plural Posten is rare.[1] A separate masculine Post, plural Posts, borrowed from English post, means a message in an Internet forum or the post position in basketball, and an obsolete Post is a form of Porst, the bog myrtle.[1][9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 717
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  4. ^ a b c d e Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
  5. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  7. ^ a b c d Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 13, 2017
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  9. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org