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POSTERITY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
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)
Sense 2
Meaning:
All of the offspring of a given progenitor
Example:
we must secure the benefits of freedom for ourselves and our posterity
Synonyms:
descendants; posterity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("posterity" is a kind of...):
biological group (a group of plants or animals)
Context examples:
And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor’s revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death five or six thousand of his majesty’s subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec foemina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
