poster
Pluralposters
Verbposters, postering, postered
Pluralposters
Formsposters, postering, postered
- 1A printed picture of a celebrity, event, or similar subject, designed to be fixed to a wall.
A vintage poster of the actress hangs framed in the hallway.
Teenagers often decorate their rooms with posters of musicians and film stars.
- 2A printed advertisement designed to be posted on a wall, pole, or similar surface to promote something.
Volunteers stapled a poster to the telephone pole announcing the lost dog.
Campaign posters covered the bulletin board outside the library.
Similarplacard, bill, flyer, notice, advertisement
Note
The advertisement is named for what is done with it: post, in the sense of putting a notice up, plus the ending -er. The name describes where it goes rather than what it shows. The same spelling hides a second word, built on post meaning "travel, dispatch". That word gives the old posthorse sense and the archaic courier, so a historical text may use poster with no wall in sight.
- 3A person who submits a message to an online forum, message board, or similar venue.
The original poster clarified the question in a follow-up comment.
Frequent posters on the board recognized each other by their usernames.
Similarcommenter, contributor
Oppositelurker
Note
Online talk took the verb post, putting a message up for others to read, and made a noun for the person in the same way the wall poster was made. Here the post is the message and the poster is the person. Posters join, argue and leave a board, like members of any community. Context nearly always keeps this word apart from the printed advertisement.
- 4To decorate a surface or space by covering it with posters.
Activists postered the downtown core overnight.
Fans poster every available wall when the tour comes to town.
Note
The verb takes the surface as its object, not the posters: you poster the walls of a bedroom or a downtown core, and the posters themselves go unmentioned. It is fully regular, with the forms postered and postering. It tends to suggest thorough coverage, a wall or a neighborhood done over, rather than a single sheet pinned up.
- 5A slam dunk performed forcefully and directly over a defending player.
The forward threw down a vicious poster on the opposing center.
His best posters from the season went viral online.
Note
Basketball names this play after the wall picture: the dunk is so emphatic, and the defender so plainly beaten, that it looks made for a pinned-up poster. On the scoreboard it counts as an ordinary basket. What it adds is humiliation, which is why a player throws down a poster on someone, with on marking the defender who ends up in the picture.
- 6A shot that strikes the goalpost rather than entering the goal.
The winger rang a poster off the crossbar in overtime.
A couple of posters denied them the tying goal.
Note
Hockey slang for the near miss: the puck rings off the post and stays out, so nothing goes on the scoreboard. "We got three posters in the third and lost" shows the typical use. Players count posters up afterward as a measure of bad luck, and "the third" here is the final period. It belongs in locker-room and broadcast talk rather than formal match reports.
- 7In Australian rules football, a shot that strikes a goalpost and scores a single point.
The forward managed only a poster from a tight angle.
A string of posters left them trailing by several points.
Note
Australian rules football keeps score in goals and behinds, and a ball that strikes the goalpost counts as the lesser score: one point, against six for a clean goal. Poster is the informal name for that unlucky single, so a team can rack up posters and still trail. Ice hockey uses the same word for a shot off the post, but there the hockey poster scores nothing at all.
Less common meanings
- 8A horse kept at a posting station to be hired by travelers or couriers along a route.
He hired a fresh poster at the coaching inn and rode through the night.
we whirled along with four posters at a gallop
1854, Charles Lever, The Dodd Family AbroadNote
A horse from the other word poster, the one built on post in its sense of traveling or dispatching in stages. Charles Lever's The Dodd Family Abroad (1854) shows it at work: "we whirled along with four posters at a gallop." The horses are named for the hired relay, not their breed. The word is dated and now belongs to coaching-era prose; in current English, posthorse is clearer.
- 9A swift traveler or courier who carries messages with speed.
A poster arrived at dawn, breathless from riding through the night with the dispatch.
posters of the sea and land
c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”Note
The human counterpart of the posthorse: someone who travels post, fast and in stages. Shakespeare's Macbeth has "posters of the sea and land," a phrase that sweeps speed across every kind of ground. The sense is archaic, so modern writing wants courier or messenger, with poster kept for quoting or echoing older texts.
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Practice
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Origins
Formed from "post" combined with the suffix "-er".
Formed from "post" (in the sense of "travel, dispatch") combined with the suffix "-er".