different between posture vs presence

English

Etymology

From French, from Italian postura, from Latin posit?ra (“position, situation”)

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?p?st??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?p??st??/

Noun

posture (countable and uncountable, plural postures)

1. The way a person holds and positions their body.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

     As if that whatsoever god who leads him / Were slily crept into his human powers, / And gave him graceful posture.

   • 1689 (or earlier), Aphra Behn, Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister

     […] walking in a most dejected posture, without a band, unbraced, his arms a-cross his open breast, and his eyes bent to the floor;

   • 1895, Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

     Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.

2. A situation or condition.
   • 1905, David Graham Phillips, The Deluge

     Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs […]

   • 1910, H.G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly

     Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things.

3. One's attitude or the social or political position one takes towards an issue or another person.
   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

     ...that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War.

   • 1912, G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

     But it is not true, no sane person can call it true, that man as a whole in his general attitude towards the world, in his posture towards death or green fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be wise to cultivate dissatisfaction.

4. (rare) The position of someone or something relative to another; position; situation.
   • 1661, Thomas Salusbury (translator), Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World

     The Moon beheld in any posture, in respect of the Sun and us, sheweth us its superficies ... always equally clear.

   • As for the guides, they were debarred from the pleasure of discourse, the one being placed in the van, and the other obliged to bring up the rear. / In this posture they travelled many hours, till they came into a wide and well-beaten road […]

Translations

Verb

posture (third-person singular simple present postures, present participle posturing, simple past and past participle postured)

1. (intransitive) to put one's body into a posture or series of postures, especially hoping that one will be noticed and admired

2. (intransitive) to pretend to have an opinion or a conviction

3. (transitive) To place in a particular position or attitude; to pose.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Howell to this entry?)

Translations

Anagrams

• -pterous, Proteus, Puertos, Stroupe, Troupes, petrous, pourest, pouters, proteus, septuor, spouter, store up, troupes

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?s.ty?/

Noun

posture f (plural postures)

1. posture, attitude
2. conduct, comportment

Descendants

• ? Romanian: postur?

Italian

Noun

posture f

1. plural of postura

Anagrams

• sputerò, stupore

English

Alternative forms

• præsence (archaic)

Etymology

Through Old French presence, from Latin praesentia (“a being present”), from praesentem. Displaced native Old English andweardnes.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p??z?ns/
• Hyphenation: pres?ence

Noun

presence (countable and uncountable, plural presences)

1. The fact or condition of being present, or of being within sight or call, or at hand.

   • Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

2. The part of space within one's immediate vicinity.

3. A quality of poise and effectiveness that enables a performer to achieve a close relationship with their audience.
4. A quality that sets an individual out from others; a quality that makes them noticed and/or admired even if they are not speaking or performing.

5. Something (as a spirit) felt or believed to be present.

6. A company's business activity in a particular market. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
7. (archaic) An assembly of great persons.
8. The state of being closely focused on the here and now, not distracted by irrelevant thoughts. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
9. (audio) Synonym of room tone

Antonyms

• absence

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

presence (third-person singular simple present presences, present participle presencing, simple past and past participle presenced)

1. (philosophy, transitive, intransitive) To make or become present.
   • 1985, David Edward Shaner, The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism: A Phenomenological Study of K?kai and D?gen, page 59,

     Within a completely neutral horizon, the primordial continuous stream of experience is presenced without interruption. As this time, the past and future have no meaning apart from the now in which they are presenced.

   • 1998, H. Peter Steeves, Founding Community: A Phenomenological-Ethical Inquiry, page 59,

     Just as the bread and butter can be presenced as more than just the bread and the butter, so baking a loaf of bread can be more than just the baking, the baker, and the bread.

   • 2005, James Phillips, Heidegger's Volk: Between National Socialism and Poetry, Stanford University Press, ?ISBN (paperback), page 118,

     From the overtaxing of the regime's paranoiac classifications and monitoring of the social field, Heidegger was to await in vain the presencing of that which is present, the revelation of the Being of beings in its precedence to governmental control.

Related terms

• present
• presentation
• omnipresence

Further reading

• presence in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “presence”, in Online Etymology Dictionary
• presence in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.