poste

Poste is a term used in French and other Romance languages with several related meanings. It commonly denotes a job or position within an organization, a postal facility, or a fixed location such as a guard post. The word appears in common phrases across domains such as employment, postal services, and security.

In the employment sense, un poste refers to a specific job or position within an organization: for example, trouver un poste, changer de poste, or être à son poste meaning to be at one’s workstation. It can also indicate a vacancy, as in poste vacant, or a management position, such as poste de direction.

In postal contexts, poste appears in phrases like bureau de poste (post office), poste restante (mail held for pickup), and as part of the name La Poste, the national postal operator in France. The term signals mail services and postal infrastructure in francophone regions and related contexts.

The word also designates a fixed location or outpost, especially in military or security usage: poste de garde (guard post), poste avancé (advanced post), or poste frontière (border post).

Similar forms exist in other Romance languages. For example, Italian uses poste as a plural of posto, referring to jobs or stations, while Romanian uses poștă for mail and postal services. Across languages, poste thus links notions of work, mail, and place in a shared semantic field.