Word.ws English Dictionary

after-wit

after-wit is the alternative spelling of afterwit.

Meaning of afterwit

Noun

afterwit (countable and uncountable, plural afterwits)

  1. Wisdom which comes after the event.
    • After wits are dearely bought, / Let thy fore-wit guide thy thought.1595, Robert Southwell, “Losse in Delayes”, in Saint Peters Complaynt With Other Poems, London: Gabriel Cawood, page 50
  2. The lack of forethought.
    Antonyms:
    forewit
  3. A good comeback, retort one thinks of only after the end of discussion or after leaving a social gathering.
    Synonyms:
    l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit, (neologism) retrotort

Forms of after-wit

pluralafter-wits

Questions about after-wit

What is after-wit the alternative spelling of?
After-wit is the alternative spelling of afterwit.

Words near after-wit in the dictionary

  1. after-tax
  2. after-the-fact
  3. after-time
  4. after-times
  5. after-war
  6. after-wit
  7. after-wits
  8. after-work
  9. after-world
  10. after-worlds
  11. after-years

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: after-wit (page history and authors); afterwit (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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