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- (posterior, back; as, postero-inferior, situated back and below; postero-lateral, situated back and at the side.

which ought to be last; inverted in order. [Obs.] The method I take may be censured as preposterous, because I thus treat last of the antediluvian earth, which was first in the order of nature. Woodward.

To persuade; to induce; to draw; to lead; to guide. It seems so preposterous a thing . . . that they do not easily bring themselves to it. Locke. The nature of the things . . . would not suffer him to think otherwise, how, or whensoever, he is brought to reflect on them. Locke.

The postero-inferior opercular bone, in fishes.

scribed in Gulliver's Travels as the home of chimerical philosophers. Hence, fanciful; preposterous; absurd in science or philosophy. "Laputan ideas." G. Eliot.

The postero-lateral ossification in the sternum of birds; also, the part resulting from such ossification.

Without sense; unmeaning; absurb; foolish; irrational; preposterous. -- Non*sen"si*cal*ly, adv. -- Non*sen"si*cal*ness, n.

in any vicious or offensive particular. "It out-Herods Herod." Shak. Out-Heroding the preposterous fashions of the times. Sir W. Scott.

Agreeable to reason; not absurd, preposterous, extravagant, foolish, fanciful, or the like; wise; judicious; as, rational conduct; a rational man.

f a court; hence, to cite; to summon; to bring into court. [Scot.] Some, however, have preposterously sisted nature as the first or generative principle. Sir W. Hamilton.