postponement

Etymology

It is formed from English postpone + -ment.^[1][2] Postpone is from Latin postpōnō (“to put off, defer, treat as secondary”),^[1][2][3] from post (“after”) and pōnō (“to place, put”).^[1][2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Deferment to a later time: 1757, in the History of Cleanthes and Celemene.^[1] Etymonline's date is 1770.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The noun came late, after postponing, postponency and postponence,^[1] the last of which is what Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 has.^[2] It followed the verb in its main sense; from 1830 it also took the verb's other sense of placing something lower or later in a series, a use now mostly confined to grammar.^[1]

Timeline

• 1757 – deferment to a later time, a temporary delay.^[1][4]
• 1830 – placing below or after in rank or order, in H. N. Coleridge; later chiefly in grammar.^[1][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of putting something off to a later time, or the state of being put off; deferment or delay: The storm forced a two-day postponement of the match.^[5][6][1]
2. The placing of something lower in rank or later in a series; in grammar, placing an element after another.^[1]

Related words

• postpone
• position

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
5. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press