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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
posture
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an upright posture/stance (=a straight body position)
▪ He appears big because of his powerful shoulders and upright posture.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bad
▪ For similar reasons bad posture can be to blame for congestion and erratic circulation in the lower part of the body.
▪ Her brother, meanwhile, brought home these drab little women with bad posture.
▪ Other physical problems, such as clumsiness or bad posture, will slowly start to improve with time.
▪ Midlife is a time when the results of bad posture can cause trouble.
▪ Weak muscles will give you a flabby shape and bad posture.
▪ This can produce bad posture and always involves using the eyes.
defensive
▪ It was this factor more than any other which caused officials and Ministers alike to adopt such defensive postures.
▪ Most of all, it requires laying aside the guilt, uncoiling the defensive posture and dealing with the facts.
▪ You find yourself in defensive postures rather than fighting back.
▪ Management was always in a defensive posture.
▪ The enterprise then assumes a defensive posture that offers little true protection and scant opportunity for improvement and growth.
▪ Feeling at once enervated and threatened, the enterprise collectively hunkers into a defensive, self-protective posture.
erect
▪ Her baby was wide awake, watchful, sitting by the road with that insolently erect posture little ones have.
good
▪ It is worth persevering with this very good posture habit.
▪ The military had placed the island city in the best possible defense posture, considering the inherent weakness of its geographic position.
▪ An important part of the preventive routine is keeping up good posture, whether standing, sitting or walking.
▪ An aggressive posture isn't a good posture and I don't like to go into it.
▪ They encourage better posture and promote a sense of well-being.
▪ This is also good for posture.
▪ Try to walk into the room with good posture, though not like a guardsman on parade.
upright
▪ Everyone looks so brisk in fresh suits of upright postures, so stiff and tense their buds won't open.
▪ An upright posture in bed or chair also aids lung expansion.
▪ The upright posture of the owl is very different from the gull.
▪ She maintains a studiously upright posture as she talks, yet her voice is gentle, her expression open and kindly.
■ NOUN
body
▪ Facial expressions and body posture can show a speaker that you are listening.
▪ One has to do with learning to read body posture, facial expressions, and the like.
▪ The stance incorporates body alignment and body posture.
▪ The seated position corresponds more readily to our body posture during the day when stress develops.
▪ Once you have established your body posture, remember to rotate the head to see the target.
▪ Frailty can interfere with body posture and gesture and therefore with body language.
▪ The relationship between body posture and suppressed past trauma or emotions was touched on in the section dealing with cervical reintegration.
■ VERB
adopt
▪ The bird adopts a characteristic squatting posture with its wings thrust forward to allow the ants access to the important feather tracts.
▪ Weld has adopted an unusually low-key posture at this meeting in contrast to the high-profile figure he has cut in the past.
▪ It was this factor more than any other which caused officials and Ministers alike to adopt such defensive postures.
▪ Try to adopt this new posture whenever possible throughout the day.
▪ Do most members want the Institute to adopt politically controversial postures?
▪ The squeeze on consumption prior to 1969 now led to trade unions adopting a more militant posture in wage negotiations.
maintain
▪ It was the price of maintaining Britain's posture as a supposedly independent nuclear power, under Labour as under the Tories.
▪ Through it all, Tatum maintained his posture of mover and shaker, champion of democracy, doer of good deeds.
▪ She maintains a studiously upright posture as she talks, yet her voice is gentle, her expression open and kindly.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Kerry has really good posture.
▪ The North has maintained a hostile military posture for 40 years.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As with all displays, the unusual movements and postures are the result of a state of conflict.
▪ At a greater distance from the throne are the inferior nobles, also standing in the same posture of profound reverence.
▪ At the extreme edge of the picture, a fourth black woman sits on the rocks in a posture of abject humiliation.
▪ Do the postures continuously, in graceful slow motion with each exercise leading into the next.
▪ During that initial visit, the team found undernourished children whose slumped posture made it difficult for them to eat.
▪ Most of all, it requires laying aside the guilt, uncoiling the defensive posture and dealing with the facts.
▪ Movements and posture used daily when doing different jobs or in different occupations can save or squander energy.
▪ She assumed the posture of coolness, confidence and self-assuredness.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Posture

Posture \Pos"ture\ (?; 135), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Postured; p. pr. & vb. n. Posturing.] To place in a particular position or attitude; to dispose the parts of, with reference to a particular purpose; as, to posture one's self; to posture a model.
--Howell.

Posture

Posture \Pos"ture\ (?; 135), n. [F., fr. L. positura, fr. ponere, positum, to place. See Position.]

  1. The position of the body; the situation or disposition of the several parts of the body with respect to each other, or for a particular purpose; especially (Fine Arts), the position of a figure with regard to the several principal members by which action is expressed; attitude.

    Atalanta, the posture of whose limbs was so lively expressed . . . one would have sworn the very picture had run.
    --Sir P. Sidney.

    In most strange postures We have seen him set himself.
    --Shak.

    The posture of a poetic figure is a description of his heroes in the performance of such or such an action.
    --Dryden.

  2. Place; position; situation. [Obs.]
    --Milton.

    His [man's] noblest posture and station in this world.
    --Sir M. Hale.

  3. State or condition, whether of external circumstances, or of internal feeling and will; disposition; mood; as, a posture of defense; the posture of affairs.

    The several postures of his devout soul.
    --Atterbury.

    Syn: Attitude; position. See Attitude.

Posture

Posture \Pos"ture\, v. i.

  1. To assume a particular posture or attitude; to contort the body into artificial attitudes, as an acrobat or contortionist; also, to pose.

  2. Fig.: To assume a character; as, to posture as a saint.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
posture

c.1600, from French posture (16c.), from Italian postura "position, posture," from Latin positura "position, station," from postulus from past participle stem of ponere "to put, place" (see position (n.)).

posture

1620s, literal, from posture (n.). The figurative sense of "take up an artificial mental position" is attested from 1877. Related: Postured; posturing.

Wiktionary
posture

n. 1 The way a person holds and positions their body. 2 A situation or condition. 3 One's attitude or the social or political position one takes towards an issue or another person. 4 (context rare English) The position of someone or something relative to another; position; situation. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) to put one's body into a posture or series of postures, especially hoping that one will be noticed and admired 2 (context intransitive English) to pretend to have an opinion or a conviction 3 (context transitive English) To place in a particular position or attitude; to pose.

WordNet
posture
  1. n. position or arrangement of the body and its limbs; "he assumed an attitude of surrender" [syn: position, attitude]

  2. characteristic way of bearing one's body; "stood with good posture" [syn: carriage, bearing]

  3. a rationalized mental attitude [syn: position, stance]

  4. capability in terms of personnel and materiel that affect the capacity to fight a war; "we faced an army of great strength"; "politicians have neglected our military posture" [syn: military capability, military strength, strength, military posture]

  5. v. behave affectedly or unnaturally in order to impress others; "Don't pay any attention to him--he is always posing to impress his peers!"; "She postured and made a total fool of herself" [syn: pose]

  6. assume a posture as for artistic purposes; "We don't know the woman who posed for Leonardo so often" [syn: model, pose, sit]

Wikipedia
Posture

Posture or posturing may refer to:

  • Posture (psychology)
  • Neutral spine or good posture
    • Abnormal posturing, in neurotrauma
    • Human position
    • Poor posture
  • Posturography, in neurology
  • semi-erect posture in crocodilians
  • Political posturing
Posture (psychology)

In humans, posture can provide a significant amount of important information on nonverbal communication and emotional cues. Psychological studies have shown the effects of body posture on emotions. This research can be traced back to Charles Darwin when he studied emotion and movement in humans and animals. Currently, many studies have shown that certain patterns of body movements are indicative of specific emotions. Researchers studied sign language and found that even non-sign language users can determine emotions from only hand movements. Another example is the fact that anger is characterized by forward whole body movement. The theories that guide research in this field are the self-validation or perception theory and the embodied emotion theory.

  • Self-validation theory is when a participant's posture has a significant effect on his or her self-evaluation of their emotions. An example of this is an experiment where participants had to think and then write positive qualities of themselves in a confident or doubtful posture. Participants then had to self-evaluate on how good a job candidate, interviewee, performer, and how satisfied they would be as an employee. Mood and confidence level were also measured. Results from this study proved in favor of the self-validation theory. Participants' attitudes in the confident but not doubtful posture, significantly affected their self-reported attitudes. A similar study showed that participants who were placed in a hunched posture reported were more likely to feel stressed compared to participants who assumed a relaxed position.
  • Embodied emotion theory is the idea that mental events can be represented by states of the body. In a study showing embodied emotion, participants were primed with concepts of pride and disappointment by a word generation task. Researchers hypothesized there would be an observable change in participants' posture based on the word they were primed with. This hypothesis was confirmed for the disappointment prime because participants were more likely to decrease in their vertical height or show slumping behavior.

Usage examples of "posture".

I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky with which Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar.

Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-inlaw and grandson.

Herr Hummel gently took my instrument from me, blew away my spittle and raised it to his own mouth, making some strange contortions with his lips before allowing them to settle in a hesitant-seeming posture around the reed.

The branches and limbs of coral seemed rigid only because each microform who darted away left chemical energy behind which only microforms who took up that exact position in the hierarchy, the same place and stance and posture, could fully enjoy.

Her posture was hard and still, as if she were a musth Bull challenging a younger rival.

Mother Shippey was a gargoyle sculptured by poverty and misuse into a posturing, painted, overdressed bundle still trying to look young.

The parasympathetic division, in contrast, acts to bring the body back from its emergency posture when the need is passed.

Exalted Inquisitor Parell Hyath stood upon the brink of pitching chaos, his hands held over his stomach in a posture of reflection and contemplation.

His distress was obvious and it was mirrored by the postures and pedipalp positions of the soldiers around him.

He saw what the Ploughers and the Castellans had failed to see, namely that while Toom Drommel and his party had no great desire to be associated with either the economic ineptitude of the Ploughers, or the strutting posturing of the Castellans, they also had no desire to be seen as a party that could not make up its mind, or take a stern stand where the safety of Madren citizens was at stake.

On the one hand, he intends to exploit the marginality of the serious writer as a posture of unassimilatability, as a means of avoiding becoming one more shelf item, which has to do not only with the thematic politicization of the novel but also with the tinge of dread that structural unresolvability instills.

Michael knew Schaumberg had advised Mona throughout her pretrial posturing and maneuvering.

The most lofty titles, and the most humble postures, which devotion has applied to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted by flattery and fear to creatures of the same nature with ourselves.

I could almost feel her thoughts realign themselves, and my pulse hammered when her posture melted from tense to seductive.

She had been reclining in a hammock, and at sound of his voice struggled suddenly to a sitting posture, a low cry on her lips.