anterity

anterity noun: all the past generations, especially the ancestors of a specific person.

Noun

anterity (uncountable)

(rare) All the past generations, especially the ancestors of a specific person.
- There was no secretary formally appointed by the meeting; but I thought that, this being the “Gibraltar” of Kansas, I would just quietly vote myself into that office, for the sake of posterity; we all owe something to our anterity, and I think we must place posterity under obligations to us.1856, a Clergyman of the Episcopal Church, “Twenty-Nine Bed-Fellows at Leavenworth City”, in In Perils by Mine Own Countrymen. Three Years on the Kansas Border., New York, N.Y.; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller...
- The most sacred right of posterity is to annul the debts with which anterity has fraudulently tried to saddle it.—Cleveland Citizen.1895 January, “Sharp Cuts”, in The Flaming Sword, volume IX, number 1, Chicago, Ill., page 11, column 2

Those who prove recreant to the trust, who, untrue to anterity and false to posterity, render liable the stain of conscription—such men simply write themselves down poltroons.1917 April 10, “Their Jobs Are Safe”, in The Pensacola Journal, volume XX, number 100, Pensacola, Fla., page 4, column 2:
We all blame our weaknesses on anterity and ascribe our virtues and strong features to our own wisdom and goodness.1918 November 25, William Brady, “Health Talks”, in The Atlanta Constitution, volume LI, number 163, Atlanta, Ga., page four, column 8:
Mencken, and the words “I use ‘anterity’.” […] Maybe you could wangle an “Anterity” commemoration stamp out of Jim Farley or at least get the word on a cancellation.[1935 October 24, The Evening Sun, volume 52, Baltimore, Md., second section, page 21, column 3:
He is buying it for his ‘anterity’ as well as for his posterity!1991, Carol Kidwell, Pontano: Poet & Prime Minister, Duckworth, →ISBN, page 283:

By analogy with posterity, replacing post- with ante-. By surface analysis, anter- + -i- + -ty.

What does anterity mean?: Anterity means all the past generations, especially the ancestors of a specific person.
How do you use anterity in a sentence?: Those who prove recreant to the trust, who, untrue to anterity and false to posterity, render liable the stain of conscription—such men simply write themselves down poltroons.
What part of speech is anterity?: Anterity is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: anterity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “anterity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anterity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.