It's the Word of the Day podcast for October 3rd.
Today's word is Posterity, spelled P-O-S-T-E-R-I-T-Y.
Posterity is a noun.
It's a formal word that refers to all future generations of people.
It's often, though not always, used with the words four or two.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Soil,
the story of a black mother's garden by Camille T. Dungey.
In that moment, Kelly and I entered the full measure of our joy.
We sang different versions of her little song a few times, even recorded ourselves for posterity.
When you envision the future, what do you imagine people doing?
Zooming about in flying cars, taking interstellar vacations across the galaxy,
whatever those people of the future get up to,
if you're doing something for posterity, you're doing it for them.
Posterity has referred to all future generations in a general sense since the 16th century.
When it was first used in the 14th century, however,
posterity referred to all of someone's offspring down to the furthest generation.
It's this use we hear in the preamble to the U.S.
Constitution in these words, we the people,
in order to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.