Word.ws English Dictionary

afters

afters noun: dessert. Also the plural of after.

Noun

afters (uncountable)

  1. (Ireland, UK, informal) Dessert.
    • What are we having for afters, Mum? I really want ice cream.
  2. (informal) The festivities held after a wedding meal.
    • To keep costs down at our wedding, we only had family at the banquet, but invited all our friends to the afters.
  3. (Ireland, UK, informal) Fighting or arguing off the ball or when play has stopped.
    • 42-2: From the other end Strauss has a bit of afters with Morne Morkel after yet another bouncer raps him on the gloves.2010 David Lewis South Africa v England - as it happened: Proteas rip into top order as tourists flounder Daily Mail (16 January 2010)
    • Clarke was dismissed in the sixty-seventh minute ... for overly enthusiastic afters with one of the Wexford players.2012 May 12, Nine-man Harps crushed in Wexford, Donegal News
  4. (Ireland, UK) An after-hours drinking session in a public house.
    • The lights flashed when the landlord shouted, “Last round of drinks before bar closes. Here^([sic]) me folks, no 'Afters' tonight mates!”2013, Hopeton Gray, Mystic Journeys: Madagascar
    • It was an afters pub, which meant it closed at 11 p.m., doors bolted, but with us all inside.2017, Chris Difford, Some Fantastic Place: My Life In and Out of Squeeze
  5. After-school care service.

Also used as

afters is also the plural of after.

Examples of afters in a sentence

  • It’s as you would expect, all love and longing, hearts on sleeves and happily ever afters.
  • I showed them these before and afters and told them I thought they’d make a good article.
  • In the real world, there are no happily ever afters, no storybook endings.

All 11 example sentences with afters

Origin of afters

From after + -s (hypocoristic suffix).

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Phrases with afters

Questions about afters

What does afters mean?
Afters means dessert.
What part of speech is afters?
Afters is a noun.

Words near afters in the dictionary

  1. afterpulsing
  2. afterquake
  3. afterquakes
  4. afterreckoning
  5. afterreckonings
  6. afters
  7. aftersail
  8. aftersails
  9. aftersale
  10. aftersales
  11. aftersaw

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: afters (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.

Last updated:

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