Word.ws English Dictionary

posterity

UK/pɒˈstɛɹɪti/

posterity noun: all the future generations, especially the descendants of a specific person.

Noun

posterity (usually uncountable, plural posterities)

  1. (usually) All the future generations, especially the descendants of a specific person.
    • That woman foretold and inflicted a singular disease on Sigvard and his posterity till the ninth generation, and several of his descendants are to this day afflicted with it.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 252
    • The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great...1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  2. (usually, transferred sense, almost always preceded by for) Future audiences, future times, future recognition.

posterity meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

posterity in Tamil

சந்தானம்

posterity in Bengali

ভবিষ্যৎ প্রজন্ম, উত্তরপুরুষ, উত্তরপ্রজন্ম

posterity in Malayalam

പിന്നാലെ വരുന്ന തലമുറകൾ, സന്തതിപരമ്പര, വരുംകാലം, നിതംബം

posterity in Kannada

ಮುಂದಿನ ತಲೆಮಾರು, ಭಾವಿ ಸಂತತಿ, ಮುಂದಿನ ಪೀಳಿಗೆ
More languagesFewer languages
posterity in Sanskrit
प्रजा prajā́
posterity in Persian
آیندگان âyandegân

Examples of posterity in a sentence

  • A pitiless, death-bearing posterity lies on the earth without cries of grief.
  • He is buying it for his ‘anterity’ as well as for his posterity!
  • Puyas may be defined as sacred written records handed down to posterity by the forefathers of the Meiteis.

All 12 example sentences with posterity

Forms of posterity

pluralposterities

Origin of posterity

Late 14th century, from Middle French posterité, from Latin posteritas, from posterus (“following, coming after”), from post (“after”) (English post-).

Words that rhyme with posterity

Questions about posterity

What does posterity mean?
Posterity means all the future generations, especially the descendants of a specific person.
What is posterity in Tamil?
Posterity in Tamil is சந்தானம். See Posterity meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is posterity?
Posterity is a noun.
How do you pronounce posterity?
Posterity is pronounced /pɒˈstɛɹɪti/ (UK).
What is the plural of posterity?
The plural of posterity is posterities.

Words near posterity in the dictionary

  1. posterising
  2. posterist
  3. posterists
  4. posteritie
  5. posterities
  6. posterity
  7. posterization
  8. posterizations
  9. posterize
  10. posterized
  11. posterizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: posterity (page history and authors); posterity (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posterity (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posterity (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); posterity (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); प्रजा (Sanskrit) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-posterity.ogg.

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