Word.ws English Dictionary

after-action

after-action adjective: written retrospectively on a given sequence of goal-oriented actions previously taken, especially if by the author himself. (of a report, analysis, etc.).

Adjective

after-action (not comparable)

  1. Written retrospectively on a given sequence of goal-oriented actions previously taken, especially if by the author himself. (of a report, analysis, etc.)
    • More than a dozen after-action evaluations have been completed, looking at how police departments responded to the demonstrations — some of them chaotic and violent, most peaceful — that broke out in hundreds of cities between late May and the end of August.2021 March 20, Kim Barker, Mike Baker, Ali Watkins, “In City After City, Police Completely Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests”, in The New York Times

Forms of after-action

alternative formafteraction

Origin of after-action

From after + action.

Questions about after-action

What does after-action mean?
After-action means written retrospectively on a given sequence of goal-oriented actions previously taken, especially if by the author himself. (of a report, analysis, etc.).
What part of speech is after-action?
After-action is an adjective.

Words near after-action in the dictionary

  1. after't
  2. after-
  3. after-acquired
  4. after-acquired title
  5. after-acquired titles
  6. after-action
  7. after-banquet
  8. after-banquets
  9. after-brain
  10. after-brains
  11. after-burden

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: after-action (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “after-action.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/after-action. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.