Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Occurring or placed after a word.
- n. A word or particle occurring or placed after another word.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Placed after something else; suffixed; appended: as, a postpositive word.
Wiktionary
- adj. grammar, of an adjective or other modifier Placed after the word modified, either immediately after, as in two men abreast, or as part of a complement, as in those two men are bad.
- n. A postpositive modifier.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Placed after another word
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of a modifier) placed after another word
Etymologies
- Late Latin postpositīvus, from Latin postpositus, past participle of postpōnere, to put after; see postpone. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Passing over the vague reference of "it," which doesn't refer clearly to anything in the preceding context, I'll ask why Clark doesn't know that "however" should be postpositive.”
“At Astrakhan State Pedagogical University, located in the Volga River delta, Maya Ryashchina has found three patterns: noun plus postpositive, as in hands-on manager and heads-up tennis; verb plus postpositive, as in drive-by killing; and a modal verb plus infinitive, as in can-do mentality, must-have wine and must-see film.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“In the case of nouns, the singular with the postpositive definite article and the indefinite plural are given in parenthesis.”
“Hainan Airlines, China′s fourth largest haulier, is set to runabout its postpositive major flights from Dalian to Singapore via Hefei on August 29,2010”
“It's a pity to disqualify the pun, but Pope Pius does not properly portray a postpositive modifier.”
“[Dr. Abate comments: Many of the culinary combinations are such, of course, because of their being loan translations from a Romance phrase (veal Florentine, steak tartare, etc.) or because they pick up the postpositive placement on the model of the French syntactical rules.]”
“However, it does contain one blunder: the phrase penny dreadful does not exemplify a postpositive modifier.”
“A.M. Kinloch University of New Brunswick The note on postpositive modifiers in English [XI,2] by Frank Abate was particularly interesting to me.”
“If the ideal postpositive modifier is (a) one which usage forbids to precede and (b) is not a participle, there seem to be very few, and Abate has proposed several of them, like heir apparent, time immemorial, and devil incarnate.”
“John B. Rockwell New York City I refer to Professor Staaks's letter on postpositive modifiers [XII,2].”
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