post

\ \ Including the prefix post-, English has four different words post. The oldest, ‘long upright piece of wood, metal, etc’ [OE], was borrowed from Latin postis. From it was derived the verb post ‘fix to a post’, which in turn produced poster [19], denoting a placard that can be ‘posted’ up. Post ‘mail’ [16] comes via French poste and Italian posta from Vulgar Latin *posta, a contracted version of posita, the feminine form of the past participle of Latin pōnere ‘put, place’ (source of English position).

\ \ The notion underlying the sense ‘mail’ is of riders ‘placed’ or stationed at intervals along a road so as to carry letters at speed by a relay system. Post ‘job’ [16] reached English via a very similar route, this time from the neuter form of the Latin past participle, positum. This became *postum in Vulgar Latin, which produced Italian posto, French poste, and English post. Here again the word’s original meaning, ‘position where a soldier is placed’, reflects that of its Latin source pōnere. The prefix post- comes from the Latin preposition post ‘after’. It occurs in a number of English words that go back to Latin ancestors (including posterior [16], posthumous, postpone [16], postscript [16], and the more heavily disguised preposterous), as well as being widely used to create new coinages (such as postgraduate [19] and postwar [20]).

\ \ Cf.⇒ POSITION