Word.ws English Dictionary

afterwave

afterwave noun: a wave (in literal and figurative senses) that follows something.

Noun

afterwave (plural afterwaves)

  1. A wave (in literal and figurative senses) that follows something.
    • From the fierce burning stream, the afterwaves keep those over which they flow, in a state of fusion:1801, Robert Charles Dallas (translator), The Natural History of Volcanoes by the Abbé Ordinaire, London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, Chapter 22, p. 158
    • Simultaneously with the lull in Germany we are beginning to hear of all these preparations [in Italy], which the lull renders comparatively unimportant. The news of them comes as a sort of afterwave of the German crisis.1866 April 28, Saturday Review, volume 21, number 548, page 490

Examples of afterwave in a sentence

  • I caught a sort of afterwave of the patriot’s angry shudder as I looked upon the forts which had recently made one of the chief overawing strongholds of the Austrian domination.1918, James Sully, chapter 5, in My Life and Friends: A Psychologist’s Memories, London: T. Fisher Unwin, page 120:
  • Sounds, the mild thunder of the night waves hitting calmer water and the sigh of retreating afterwaves, now joined together with what we saw.1968, Ayi Kwei Armah, chapter 6, in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 84:
  • She was in one of the afterwaves of coming when he began.2003, Norman Rush, chapter 37, in Mortals, New York: Knopf, pages 705–706:

Forms of afterwave

pluralafterwaves

Origin of afterwave

From after- + wave.

Questions about afterwave

What does afterwave mean?
Afterwave means a wave (in literal and figurative senses) that follows something.
How do you use afterwave in a sentence?
I caught a sort of afterwave of the patriot’s angry shudder as I looked upon the forts which had recently made one of the chief overawing strongholds of the Austrian domination.
What part of speech is afterwave?
Afterwave is a noun.
What is the plural of afterwave?
The plural of afterwave is afterwaves.

Words near afterwave in the dictionary

  1. afterwardness
  2. afterwards
  3. afterwardsness
  4. afterwash
  5. afterwashes
  6. afterwave
  7. afterwaves
  8. afterwhile
  9. afterwisdom
  10. afterwise
  11. afterwit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: afterwave (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: “afterwave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/afterwave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.