posterity

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English posterite,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Middle French postérité^[5][4][6] and directly borrowed from Latin posteritās (“descendants, future generations, future ages”).^[5][7] The American Heritage Dictionary, Barnhart and the Middle English Dictionary name Old French as the source,^[8][3][2] and the Anglo-Norman word is recorded from 1293.^[9] The OED dates the French sense of descendants from 1359, and that of future generations from 1549, apart from an isolated record of 1314.^[5] The Latin noun is formed from posterus (“coming after, later”), from post (“after”).^[10][3][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person's descendants: before 1387, in Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon, where "þe posterite of Edward" stands beside his successors.^[2][3] The OED dates its first record, from a Cambridge manuscript of a translation of Higden, c. 1410.^[5] Etymonline and Merriam-Webster give the late or simply the 14th century.^[10][4]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant a family line, and the MED also records it for the begetting of offspring.^[2] It widened from one person's descendants to all future generations: the OED first has this before 1525, in Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil, and it became the chief sense, often with the idea of an inheritance handed on.^[5][12] The Coverdale Bible (1535) has it for a single later generation, a use now rare.^[5] Johnson (1755) still joined the two in "succeeding generations; descendants: opposed to ancestors", quoting Shakespeare's Macbeth,^[13] and "ourselves and our posterity" stands in the Constitution of the United States.^[4] The older sense of a person's descendants is now archaic.^[5] The sense of posteriority, the condition of coming later, is recorded once, in Bonde's Pylgrimage of Perfeccyon.^[5]

Timeline

• before 1387 – a person's descendants collectively, as posterite.^[2][3]
• before 1525 – all future generations of people.^[5]
• before 1530 – the condition of coming later (obsolete).^[5]
• 1535 – a later generation, in the Coverdale Bible.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. All future generations of people; future time: The council filmed the ceremony for posterity.^[4][11][5]
2. Future fame or recognition.^[12]
3. A later generation (rare).^[5]
4. All the descendants of one person (archaic).^[5][4][11]

Related words

• post-
• posterior
• posteriority

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.