aftersound

Noun

aftersound (plural aftersounds)

1. A sound that persists or remains audible after its source has ceased to produce it; the perception of such a sound.
   • […] the strings of an instrument, […] being strucken with the hand, do verberate the ayre in its first sound, and are reverberated by the ayre to an after-sound.1659, Nathanael Homes, A Sermon Preached before Parliament, London: Edward Brewster, published 1660, page 33
   • He fired the Winchester twice again, into the distance, then lowered it, the ringing aftersound of the gunfire in his ears.1970, Elmore Leonard, chapter 7, in Valdez is Coming, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, page 132

   Synonyms:

   echo, resonance, reverberation

   Antonyms:

   foresound

2. (acoustics) The second, slower phase of decay in the sound made by a piano string when it is struck.
3. (obsolete) A weaker sound that immediately follows a more salient one, such as the second, less prominent vowel sound in a falling diphthong.
   • In English I cannot hear the sound of Italian o chiuso, but only that of (o 5) followed by an aftersound, as in home, or without this aftersound, as in more.1881, Louis Lucien Bonaparte, “The simple sounds of all the living Slavonic languages compared with those of the principal Neo-Latin and Germano-Scandinavian Tongues,” Transactions of the...
   • They [gu and qu] were not groups formed of a guttural stop and the semi-vowel v, but guttural stops with a labial aftersound; the latter receiving a very much weaker articulation than the semi-vowel v.1910, Max Niedermann, Outlines of Latin Phonetics, London: Routledge, page 46