Word of the Day

: December 24, 2015

aftermath

noun AF-ter-math

What It Means

1 : a second-growth crop

2 : consequence, result 

3 : the period immediately following a usually ruinous event 

aftermath in Context

It was almost noon before I felt ready to face the aftermath of the previous night's festivities, and to begin cleaning up.

"In the aftermath of World War II, Tupperware parties became a popular compromise between the jobs many [American women] had grown accustomed to while American men were fighting overseas and their re-entrenched domestic obligations as wives and mothers." — Schuyler Velasco, The Christian Science Monitor, 31 Aug. 2015

Did You Know?

Aftermath dates to the late 1400s and was originally an agricultural term. Its two parts are transparent—but only if you're familiar with an ancient word math that is now used only in British dialectal English and that means "a mowing of a grass or hay crop" and also refers to the crop that is gathered. The original aftermath came, of course, after the math: it was historically the crop of (usually) grass cut, grazed, or plowed under after the first crop of the season from the same soil. It wasn't until the mid-late 1600s that aftermath developed its other meanings, both of which are now far more common than the first.