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Which U.S. document mentions posterity in its preamble?

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posterity

American  

[po-ster-i-tee] / pɒˈstɛr ɪ ti /

noun

• posterities
  plural

1. 

   succeeding or future generations collectively.

   Judgment of this age must be left to posterity.

2. all descendants of one person.

   His fortune was gradually dissipated by his posterity.

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posterity British  

/ pɒˈstɛrɪtɪ /

noun

1. future or succeeding generations

2. all of one's descendants

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• posterities
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of posterity

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English posterite, from Old French postérité, from Latin posteritāt-, stem of posteritās, noun derivative of posterus “coming after”; see posterior, -ity

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Explanation

Posterity is a noun meaning "future generations." These people of the future could be your children and great-great grandchildren, or any people who are born after you. If you save something "for posterity," you're hoping that years later people will appreciate it, like a time capsule you bury in the yard. The word comes from the Latin word for "post, after." It's also related to the word posterior, which means "behind, to come after in time." In legal terms, posterity refers to the offspring of a person and it often has to do with inheriting property and who is entitled to do so.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

posterity posterities

Chawawa was in his teens when social media and smartphones took off, and says he "took for granted" the brief time before any and every fun occasion was recorded and posted for posterity.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026

It also clarified how, in a philosophical sense, the inheritance of the founding was accessible to more than the direct posterity of the Founders.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 8, 2026

But posterity will almost certainly remember Monday as the “Wemby game,” in which the 22-year-old Frenchman single-handedly dismantled one of the greatest teams, statistically, that the NBA has ever seen.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026

Like Queen Victoria, Zadie Smith and many others, she had concluded that posterity would be better served without her full diary than with it.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 6, 2026

Additional copies have been filed elsewhere for posterity and safekeeping, as the desk copies often meet such gruesome fates while Chandresh agonizes over every word.

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

If you and those in power with you should be found walking in the King’s steps, can you secure yourselves or posterities from an overturn?

From The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer by Lewis Henry Berens

He asked indignantly how the House of Lords could expect the Commons to give their concurrence to a measure "by which they and their posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage."

From A History of the Four Georges, Volume I by Justin McCarthy

BUT Love has more to do with his own possible and probable posterities, than with the once living but now impossible ancestries in the past.

From Pierre; or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville

During those primeval centuries, there lived at the same time nine patriarchs, together with their posterities, and all of them in harmony concerning the faith in the blessed seed!

From Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II Luther on Sin and the Flood by John Nicholas Lenker

Remember, it is not before my Lord Buckhurst and Master Beale that we sit, but before all posterities for evermore, who will hear of Mary Stewart and her wrongs.

From Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland by Charlotte Mary Yonge

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