Word.ws English Dictionary

afterall

afterall is the contraction of after all.

Meaning of after all

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Anyway, in any case; indicates a statement is true regardless of other considerations; used to reinforce or explain a point.
    • After all, they never come home for Christmas.
  2. (idiomatic) In the end, however; used in referring to something that was believed to be the case, but is not; or to an outcome that is not what was expected or predicted.
    • They won't be coming home for Christmas after all.
  3. Introduces information that supports the preceding statement.
    • Of course he's coming to the party. After all, he did promise.

Questions about afterall

What is afterall the contraction of?
Afterall is the contraction of after all.

Words near afterall in the dictionary

  1. afteracts
  2. afterafterparties
  3. afterafterparty
  4. afterage
  5. afterages
  6. afterall
  7. afterattack
  8. afterattacks
  9. afterbath
  10. afterbaths
  11. afterbay

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: afterall (page history and authors); after all (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: “afterall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/afterall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.