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...The related sense of post came to us from Latin through Italian and French in the sixteenth century. The original Latin word meant “position; placing” and the idea in the English term was that of placing riders at intervals along a road so as to carry letters at speed by a relay system, hence post-haste. The word also turns up in such compounds as post-chaise and post-horse, both with the same idea of travelling by stages between stations called posting-houses or post-houses; the short-lived American Pony Express used just this idea. Again, it was not long before the word began to be applied to the things being carried rather than the method of carriage....