Word.ws English Dictionary

afterwits

afterwits is the plural of afterwit.

Meaning of afterwit

Noun

afterwit (countable and uncountable, plural afterwits)

  1. Wisdom which comes after the event.
    • After wits are dearely bought, / Let thy fore-wit guide thy thought.1595, Robert Southwell, “Losse in Delayes”, in Saint Peters Complaynt With Other Poems, London: Gabriel Cawood, page 50
  2. The lack of forethought.
    Antonyms:
    forewit
  3. A good comeback, retort one thinks of only after the end of discussion or after leaving a social gathering.
    Synonyms:
    l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit, (neologism) retrotort

Questions about afterwits

What is afterwits the plural of?
Afterwits is the plural of afterwit.

Words near afterwits in the dictionary

  1. afterwaves
  2. afterwhile
  3. afterwisdom
  4. afterwise
  5. afterwit
  6. afterwits
  7. afterwitted
  8. afterword
  9. afterwords
  10. afterwork
  11. afterworld

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: afterwits (page history and authors); afterwit (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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