Definition
POST carries three distinct functions in legal usage, each independent of the others.
1. Latin adverb/preposition meaning "after" or "subsequent to." Used as a prefix, standalone citation signal, and term of art in compound legal phrases. As a prefix, it builds a broad family of legal concepts — post-conviction, post-closing, post-judgment, post-arrest — all signifying that the matter arises after a defined legal event. As a citation signal within texts and law reports, "post" directs the reader forward to a later portion of the same document, corresponding to "infra" in some traditions. The signal "ante" or "supra" serves the inverse function.
2. The postal system and mail conveyance. In older English and American legal usage, "post" referred to the system of organized mail carriage — the stages, horses, routes, and couriers by which letters and dispatches were carried. This usage appears in contracts, evidence law, and procedural rules governing service by mail. The phrase "sent by post" in older statutes and cases means transmitted through the public mail system. This sense is largely obsolete as independent legal vocabulary but survives in compound terms and in older authorities.
3. A writ of entry in old practice (Law Latin: "in the post"). A species of writ of entry used in real property actions. The writ of entry "in the post" was one of the most remote degrees of entry recognized by the common law forms of action — used when the claimant could not allege a specific wrongful act within the permitted degrees. It belongs to the now-abolished system of real actions and has no modern procedural equivalent.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Post" in ordinary contemporary English refers most prominently to a physical upright support, a position of employment or military station, an item of mail, the act of publishing content online, or appears as part of a newspaper name (e.g., The Washington Post).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 captures the mail-conveyance sense directly, along with the station or fixed stopping-point meaning from which it derived, closely mirroring the legal dictionaries of the same era.
The gap worth flagging: when researchers encounter "post" alone in older legal materials, the instinct to read it as a noun (a post, a station, a newspaper) can mislead. In legal texts and reports, "post" standing alone is almost always the Latin adverb directing attention forward in the document, not a reference to mail or to a physical post. Compound forms ("sent by post," "writ of entry in the post") require separate parsing.
Common Confusion
Three uses of "post" are easily conflated in historical legal materials:
— "Post" as a citation signal (meaning see later in this text) versus "infra," which is used synonymously in many traditions. Some older English reports use "post" where American legal writers would use "infra," and vice versa. Researchers reading across jurisdictions should not assume uniform convention.
— "Post" as prefix versus "post" as standalone signal. "Post-judgment" and "post-conviction" use "post" as a combining form with independent meaning; standalone "post" in a footnote or text reference is purely navigational.
— The writ of entry "in the post" is a technical real-property term of art entirely unrelated to mail or to the Latin citation signal. Burrill's entry connecting it to the old forms of entry is the clearest historical source; the phrase will not appear in modern procedural contexts at all.
Why It Matters in Research
The Latin prefix function dominates modern legal usage, and researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter "post-" compounds constantly across practice areas. Precision matters: "post-arrest" triggers distinct constitutional analysis from "post-indictment"; "post-closing" in real estate transactions triggers a specific set of obligations distinct from closing-day duties; "post-conviction" opens an entire branch of criminal procedure including DNA testing rights, collateral review, and habeas corpus. These distinctions are not interchangeable, and the prefix alone signals nothing about which doctrine applies — the noun following it does the work.
For historical research, the mail-conveyance sense of "post" is significant in two contexts. First, in evidence and procedure: older statutes and rules governing constructive notice, service of process, and the mailbox rule use "sent by post" as the operative phrase. Researchers reading 19th-century cases must recognize this as a reference to the formal postal system, not casual delivery. Second, in contract drafting and interpretation, "by post" carried specific legal implications about when acceptance became effective — the foundation for the acceptance-by-post (mailbox) rule developed in English and American common law.
The writ of entry "in the post" is a dead form with no modern application, but it appears in old real property titles and chain-of-title litigation from the 18th and early 19th centuries. Researchers tracing historical title may encounter references to it. Burrill's is the most useful shelf source for initial orientation; from there, the real actions treatises and Blackstone's Commentaries provide the operational context.
Jurisdictional note: The mailbox rule — rooted in the "post" as acceptance-by-mail doctrine — varies in application between contract and offer-acceptance contexts, and has been modified or displaced in many jurisdictions by electronic communication rules. Researchers should not assume that older "sent by post" case law maps cleanly onto modern electronic service or e-mail acceptance questions.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are largely in agreement on the two primary senses. Black's (both editions) covers the Latin adverb/citation signal and the mail-conveyance meaning. Rapalje & Lawrence follows the same structure for the postal sense, adding a stray fragment about fines (an artifact of the source layout, not substantive content about "post"). Burrill adds the writ of entry usage — the most technically specific entry in the shelf sources — and is the only dictionary to flag this procedural meaning explicitly, making it the preferred starting point for anyone researching the old real actions.
Anderson's entry, as reproduced, is clearly a fragment from an adjacent entry on possession and fraudulent conveyance; it contributes nothing to the meaning of "post" and should be disregarded as a source artifact.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: none of them address the modern dominant usage of "post" as a prefix creating compound legal terms. This is expected given their age, but it means the shelf sources are nearly useless as a guide to the "post-conviction," "post-closing," or "post-judgment" vocabulary that dominates contemporary legal research. Researchers must build that understanding from the substantive doctrine of each compound term, not from dictionary entries for "post" itself.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Post-Conviction DNA Testing (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) — for the most consequential modern "post-" compound in criminal procedure, including the statutory and constitutional framework governing access to testing after judgment.
Post-Closing Obligations — Title Policy Delivery, Document Retention, and Post-Closing Corrections (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia) — for the specific legal duties that arise after a real estate closing, where "post-closing" is a term of art with defined content.
Right to Silence — Pre-Arrest and Post-Arrest (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) — for the constitutional significance of the pre-/post-arrest distinction, illustrating how the "post" prefix changes legal analysis in Fifth and Sixth Amendment contexts.