POSTERITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does posterity mean? 

• POSTERITY (noun)
  The noun POSTERITY has 2 senses:

1. all of the offspring of a given progenitor

2. all future generations

  Familiarity information: POSTERITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• POSTERITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

All of the offspring of a given progenitor

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

descendants; posterity

Context example:

we must secure the benefits of freedom for ourselves and our posterity

Hypernyms ("posterity" is a kind of...):

biological group (a group of plants or animals)

Sense 2

Meaning:

All future generations

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("posterity" is a kind of...):

generation (group of genetically related organisms constituting a single step in the line of descent)

 Context examples 

"I trust, sir, that my name will have other and more personal claims upon posterity," said Challenger, severely.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Since you have preserved my narration,” said he, “I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity.”

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He was strongly bent to get me a woman of my own size, by whom I might propagate the breed: but I think I should rather have died than undergone the disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept in cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps, in time, sold about the kingdom, to persons of quality, for curiosities.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

And yet a man like Principal Fairbanks of Oxford—a man who sits in an even higher place than you, Judge Blount—has said that Spencer will be dismissed by posterity as a poet and dreamer rather than a thinker.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of snilpall, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to his posterity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And yet I felt happier than I had done since this crushing blow had fallen upon me, for it was good to think that the world should know what we had done, so that at the worst our names should not perish with our bodies, but should go down to posterity associated with the result of our labors.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That these were the ornament and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned ancestors, whose honour had been the reward of their virtue, from which their posterity were never once known to degenerate.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)