Prefix · after / following
Signals time or position after something else: postgraduate, postpone, postwar, postmortem.
Written by Bryan López, English teacher · Updated
Post- comes from Latin "post" (after, behind) and signals that something occurs or exists after another thing: postgraduate = study after the first degree; postpone = put something to a later time; postwar = after the war; post-match = after the match. It is the direct antonym of pre-.
Post- is highly productive in modern English: post-pandemic, post-match analysis, postpartum, postmodern. It also carries the sense of "mail" in words like postcard (a card sent by post) and postbox (a box for collecting mail). The postal meaning and the temporal meaning are two separate usages that happen to share the same prefix.
Attaches to nouns and adjectives. Takes a hyphen for specific temporal contexts or before proper nouns:
Pronunciation: /poʊst/, rhymes with "most" and "toast." Identical in Spanish and English.
post-/poʊst/
Tap the button to hear how the prefix sounds. Each word in the table has its own audio.
"Postmortem" is widely used figuratively: "the team held a postmortem" = they conducted a detailed review of what went wrong. Very common in business, project management, and sports contexts.
"Postscript" or "P.S." = text added at the end of a letter, after the signature. It is the "posdata" in Spanish. It has no connection to "script" as a screenplay in this context.
A trick to remember it
Post- = "after": postgraduate = after the first degree, postwar = after the war, postpone = put to after now. It is the exact opposite of pre- and very easy to recognise because it is identical in Spanish and English.
Exercise 1 · Form the word
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
"After the project failed, the team held a ___ to understand exactly what had gone wrong."
Exercise 3 · Pick the right one
What is a "P.S." or "postscript" in a letter?
The prefix post- signals time or position after something else: postgraduate, postpone, postwar, postmortem. In Spanish it usually maps to post- / después de.
The prefix post- is pronounced /poʊst/. For example, "postgraduate".
"graduate" becomes "postgraduate". It is a typical example of the post- prefix.
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