afterscent
English
Etymology
after- + scent
Noun
afterscent (plural afterscents)
- A scent that follows something; a scent remaining after its source is no longer present.
- Coordinate term: forescent
- 1861, R. H. Chermside, An Only Son, Chapter 21, in Dublin University Magazine Volume 58, No. 343, p. 185,
- “Prickly plants of disappointment spring up in so many shapes! Yet some have flowers of sweet afterscent. […] ”
- 1890, William Beatty-Kingston, “The Triumphs of Smoke” in A Journalist’s Jottings, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 2, p. 137,
- Men—even those strongly addicted to the weed—seldom smoked in their own houses, the female prejudice against the after-scent of tobacco running remarkably high in the early “fifties.”
- 1952, Nadine Gordimer, “Another Part of the Sky” in Short Stories from Southern Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, pp. 30-31,
- He closed the bathroom door with a muted creak so that he could turn on the light without its pale square opening on the wall in the bedroom where his wife lay. The warm after-scent of a bath met him.
- 1976, John Updike, “From the Journal of a Leper” in Problems and Other Stories, New York: Knopf, 1979, p. 194,
- Carlotta tells me I am less passionate. It is morning. She has just left, leaving behind her a musky afterscent of dissatisfaction.
- 2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, New York: Penguin Press, Part 2, p. 111,
- the tobacco, weed and cocaine on his fingers mixed with motor oil, all of it accumulating into the afterscent of wood smoke caught and soaked in his hair