postum
[pɔsˈtuːm]
The verdict
“postum” is uncommon German (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - nach jemandes Tod erfolgend, nachträglich geschehend
Corpus desk
Index DE-postum · postum · German
postum · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | postum |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | [pɔsˈtuːm] |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „postum“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
postum is uncommon German outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed [pɔsˈtuːm]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "nach jemandes Tod erfolgend, nachträglich geschehend".
Zero misspellings are on record for postum in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is postum, spelled P-O-S-T-U-M.
Definition
- 1nach jemandes Tod erfolgend, nachträglich geschehend
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how postum appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Eines der bahnbrechenden Werke der Linguistik, Ferdinand de Saussures Cours de linguistique générale (Titel der deutschen Übersetzung: Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft) erschien 1916 postum.
„Dieser erhebliche Aufwand rechtfertigt natürlich das eine oder andere Jahrzehnt des Wartens und weckt postum tiefes Verständnis für die Nöte und Sorgen der Spitzel.“
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.