POSTIL.

I encountered a number of words new to me in an enigmatic post chez l’Eudæmoniste (chez whom there is nil postiche) that is either a riff on the word post itself or a gloomy meditation (or of course both). It consists of words and phrases built around the syllable post, beginning with the hapax postation (OED: ‘The placing of one thing after another’; only in 1607 Schol. Disc. agst. Antichr. i. ii. 95 The postation of the wine doth not preiudice it, therefore the postponing of the Crosse doth not preiudice it neither) and ending with a second hapax, postreme (‘Last, hindmost; absol. one who is last’: 1553 Bale Gardiner’s De vera Obed. G j b, They were counsailed of som bodye not to contende to be called supremes, as longe as they are still postremes), but the word that buttonholed me was postliminy, which turns out to mean ‘In Rom. Law, The right of any person who had been banished or taken captive, to assume his former civic privileges on his return home. Hence, in Internat. Law, The restoration to their former state of persons and things taken in war, when they come again into the power of the nation to which they belonged.’


There are, incidentally, two italicized phrases in the list which do not contain post; if your classical education is up to snuff, however, you will know why they are there. If not, Google is your friend.

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