posthumous [E17th] In English posthumous means ‘happening after a person’s death’. Latin postumus, on which it is based, meant ‘last’. A baby born posthumously (the most common use of the word), after the death of its father, would be the father’s last child. The h was added to the spelling of the English word because of the influence of humus ‘ground, earth’, or humare ‘to bury’, both words that relate to the idea of death. The French near relative of postumus was puisne, formed from puis ‘afterwards’ and né ‘born’. This originally meant a younger person, and is the source of our puny [M16th].