This week’s theme
Adverbs

This week’s words
elsewhither
posthaste

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(post-hayst)

MEANING:

adverb: With great speed.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the phrase “haste, post, haste” Earliest documented use: 1545.

NOTES:

Before email, air mail, and the telegraph, high-speed delivery meant a person on horseback galloping through mud, rain, and the occasional chicken crossing the road (Why?). The posts were stations along the route where tired messengers and their exhausted mounts could be quickly swapped out for fresh ones. If a letter had to be delivered quickly, it was inscribed “Haste, post, haste.” Over time, the phrase shortened to posthaste (or post-haste). You could say posthaste is the ancestor of ASAP, only dustier and with more horsepower.

USAGE:

“Moses [Brown] rode posthaste to Boston, and got John released.”
Frances Fitzgerald; Peculiar Institutions; The New Yorker; Sep 12, 2005.

See more usage examples of posthaste in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: