MEANING
1. The people who will live in generations after the present one.
2. The children and later descendants of a particular person or family.
Use it for
describing an attempt to preserve something for future people; contrasting present approval with later judgment; writing about legacy beyond a single lifetimeSeparates an audience in future generations from a particular person’s descendants, useful in memory, legacy, and inheritance narratives. Writing functions: Memory / Mortality.
Words that belong together
- preserve for posterity
- the judgment of posterity
- leave to posterity
On the page
She dated the recording carefully, less for her listeners than for posterity.
He trusted posterity to notice the passages his contemporaries had ignored.
The deed promised the estate to her posterity, though she had no children when she signed it.
He feared that his posterity would inherit the quarrel along with the house.
Word forms
- Base
- posterity
Usage notes
Normally uncountable: posterity. No ordinary plural. Common frames: for posterity, future posterity, one’s posterity; the last can mean descendants. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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