Word.ws English Dictionary

afterpains

afterpains is the plural of afterpain.

Meaning of afterpain

Noun

afterpain (plural afterpains)

  1. Pain that occurs or remains after an event, such as surgery (especially dental surgery), eating spicy food, or simply an initial, sharper pain.
    • [Causes of] afterpain are rapid injection of the solution or using it too hot, and where the solution is taken from a stock bottle and not boiled; afterpain may also result from sepsis. The enigma of afterpain will undoubedly always by with us[…]1924, Northwest Journal of Dentistry, page 7
  2. (in plural, often) Pain of uterine contractions experienced after childbirth (especially after passage of the placenta).

Questions about afterpains

What is afterpains the plural of?
Afterpains is the plural of afterpain.

Words near afterpains in the dictionary

  1. afternoonish
  2. afternoons
  3. afternote
  4. afternotes
  5. afterpain
  6. afterpains
  7. afterpart
  8. afterparties
  9. afterparts
  10. afterparty
  11. afterpeak

Source and license

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