Posthumus

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A child who is born after the death of their father, a term drawn from Latin for a son born after his father has died ; the name of a noble character in Shakespeare's play Cymbeline
2. Used for a child born following the death of the father ; a male figure named Leonatus in the tragicomedy Cymbeline, whose marriage to Imogen is central to the plot
3. A baby delivered once its father has already died ; the title character of a Shakespearean romance who is the husband of Imogen and the lover at the heart of Cymbeline

Etymology: Posthumous comes from Latin "postumus," a superlative form built on "post" ("after"), so it originally meant "last-born" or "coming after," and it was used of children born after their father's death. The Latin form was itself a corruption: "postumus" looks like it should derive from "post," but the spelling was altered by association with "humus" ("ground"), giving the sense of a child laid in the earth after the father was buried, a folk connection that the word's real history does not support. In English the word appeared in the early 1600s, and its meaning has since broadened. Today it mainly describes things that happen or appear after a person's death, such as a published book or an award given to someone who has died. The adjective's core sense of being born after a father's death is still the one that matters for the Latin root.