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preposterous[preposterous 词源字典]

preposterous: [16] Preposterous originated as a Latin oxymoron, praeposterus. This was coined from prae ‘before’ and posterus ‘coming after, next’, a derivative of post ‘after’. It denoted ‘the wrong way round, out of order’ (and indeed that was how English preposterous was once used: ‘The preposterous is a pardonable fault … We call it by a common saying to set the cart before the horse’, George Puttenham, Art of English Poesie 1589). But already in Latin the notion had developed via ‘irrational’ to ‘absurd’, a sense quickly taken up by English.
[preposterous etymology, preposterous origin, 英语词源]