posthumous
POS-chuh-musadjMeaning happening or given after a person’s death
Memory hook POST = after: praise that comes AFTER a life. Great-Grandma Rose painted all her life, but her pictures won prizes only after she had passed away: her fame was posthumous.
The poet’s best-known book was a posthumous collection, printed after she died.
In context The painter sold only one picture in her lifetime; her fame was posthumous, growing only after her death, when museums began to collect her work.
Similar after-death, postmortem
Opposite lifetime
From Latin postumus, “last, born after the father’s death”; the h was added later by people who linked it with humus (earth).