anterity

English

Etymology

By analogy with posterity, replacing post- with ante-.

Noun

anterity (uncountable)

1. (rare) All the past generations, especially the ancestors of a specific person.
   • 1856, a Clergyman of the Episcopal Church, “Twenty-Nine Bed-Fellows at Leavenworth City”, in In Perils by Mine Own Countrymen. Three Years on the Kansas Border., New York, N.Y., Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, […], page 67:

     There was no secretary formally appointed by the meeting; but I thought that, this being the “Gibraltar” of Kansas, I would just quietly vote myself into that office, for the sake of posterity; we all owe something to our anterity, and I think we must place posterity under obligations to us.

   • 1895 January, “Sharp Cuts”, in The Flaming Sword, volume IX, number 1, Chicago, Ill., page 11, column 2:

     The most sacred right of posterity is to annul the debts with which anterity has fraudulently tried to saddle it.—Cleveland Citizen.

   • 1917 April 10, “Their Jobs Are Safe”, in The Pensacola Journal, volume XX, number 100, Pensacola, Fla., page 4, column 2:

     Those who prove recreant to the trust, who, untrue to anterity and false to posterity, render liable the stain of conscription—such men simply write themselves down poltroons.

   • 1918 November 25, William Brady, “Health Talks”, in The Atlanta Constitution, volume LI, number 163, Atlanta, Ga., page four, column 8:

     He died a comparatively young man, attributing his heart disease to his grandfather or somebody. We all blame our weaknesses on anterity and ascribe our virtues and strong features to our own wisdom and goodness.

   • [1935 October 24, The Evening Sun, volume 52, Baltimore, Md., second section, page 21, column 3:

     Dear Mr. Billopp—My problem is an aphorism defining “morals,” namely: “Morals are the rules of conduct laid down by posterity.” Only it’s the opposite of “posterity” I mean, and “posterity” has no opposite. […] I have worked on this for years and hate to dump the burden on your research department, but I simply can not find an abstract noun to serve as “posterity’s” antonym. / R. N. Roop / Of course what you want is “anterity,” but there is no such word. […] You might offer a $10,000 prize for the best slogan featuring the word, and run a series of ads displaying the portraits of distinguished literary persons, beginning with H. L. Mencken, and the words “I use ‘anterity’.” […] Maybe you could wangle an “Anterity” commemoration stamp out of Jim Farley or at least get the word on a cancellation.]

   • 1991, Carol Kidwell, Pontano: Poet & Prime Minister, Duckworth, →ISBN, page 283:

     Onion-hawker, acting as a notary, reads out a document conveying a house owned by Fat Cabbage-stalk, the hoer of Sarno, and his wife Black Pot, to Dreary Slob, a traveller from Acerra, who is buying it for himself, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, his great-great-grandchildren and all his posterity. Here Slob interrupts, to Onion-hawker’s annoyance, to insist that ‘forebears’ should be included as well. He is buying it for his ‘anterity’ as well as for his posterity!

   • 2016, Michael Marmur, Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder, University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 13:

     Heschel’s horizon looks to posterity, but it is rooted in what we might term “anterity,” the multifaceted layers of tradition.