
Ask HN: What is the origin of the term “post” (e.g. blog post)? - laumars
I have a few theories on this but was unable to find any evidence to back any of them up<p>1) It could be a reference to snail mail. However I think this is the least likely to be true<p>2) It&#x27;s a reference advert postings. Which originate from when literal posts were nailed in front of shops.<p>3) It was used because HTTP POST requests were modifying data rather than reading it. So it was a term used by nerds that slowly became common slang. This used to be my assumption but thinking about it now, I think we used to post stuff to bulletin boards in the pre-web Internet.<p>4) Something else I hadn&#x27;t considered.<p>I know this might seem an odd question but it&#x27;s something that has puzzled me for sometime as it&#x27;s a weird term to use when you look at the literal meaning of &quot;post&quot; in the pre-web era of publishing (or maybe it was commonly used then as well but I&#x27;d just never encountered it used for whatever reason?)
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microwavecamera
I'm pretty the term originated with BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) which were
patterned after a literal bulletin board. Back in the day we used bulletin
boards for posting public messages. Seriously, before the internet we used to
just stick pieces of paper to a cork board with a thumbtack that was displayed
in public places.

From Wikipedia:

"The first public dial-up BBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy
Suess. According to an early interview, when Chicago was snowed under during
the Great Blizzard of 1978, the two began preliminary work on the Computerized
Bulletin Board System, or CBBS. The system came into existence largely through
a fortuitous combination of Christensen having a spare S-100 bus computer and
an early Hayes internal modem, and Suess's insistence that the machine be
placed at his house in Chicago where it would be a local phone call to
millions of users. Christensen patterned the system after the cork board his
local computer club used to post information like "need a ride"."

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paulrpotts
I think this is the most likely - you "post" items on a bulletin board.

I remember both the blizzard of 1978 and bulletin boards :)

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mtmail
Can't be (3) because it pre-dates the internet. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system)
"Christensen patterned the system after the cork board his local computer club
used to post information like "need a ride""

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laumars
Sounds like it originated from literal sign posts (guess 2) then.

Assuming, of course, that the Wikipedia entry isn't just retro-fitting a
modern term that wasn't used in that context in that era. However I don't
think that's likely.

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microwavecamera
"Post" was the old timey term for a public announcement or message. This is
why so many old newspapers have the word post on their name.

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Tomte
See [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/post](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/post) and
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/post](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/post)

~~~
laumars
I had but found they were too generalised and go too far backwards to cover
how internet messages - specifically - came to be known as "posts". So they
don't discuss the evolution of the word and how it crossed over to the digital
era. eg did it cross over from early shop keepers nailing physical posts
outside and just became a colloquialism for advertising that way? Or was it a
reference to telegraph poles (posts) used to relay messages that then because
slang for transmitting messages but later become a noun - like the reverse
that happened with Photoshop (noun: Adobe product) / Photoshop (adjective:
edit an image).

