after

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (1)  · 
Alcatraz is named after a Spanish word meaning pelican?

View all »
Definitions (48)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (21)

  1. preposition Behind in place or order: Z comes after Y in the alphabet.
  2. preposition Next to or lower than in order or importance.
  3. preposition In quest or pursuit of: seek after fame; go after big money.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (21)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Elissa, a clever woman and never one to back down from a challenge, cut the hide into the narrowest of strips and encircled this hill, which is called Byrsa now, after the Greek word for ox hide. —  The African Quest
  • This slightly shorter day is called the “sidereal day,” after a Latin word meaning “star,” since this is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once relative to the stars. —  StrangeHorizons,August2002
  • The remains are thought to belong to Homo antecessor, named after the Latin word for pioneer or explorer because they are the first humans who reached Europe after a long migration from Africa. —  Telegraph.co.uk: news business sport the Daily Telegraph newspaper Sunday Telegraph
  • The discovery was made using one of the largest optical telescopes in the World, called Subaru (named after the Japanese word for the Pleiades star cluster), located on the Island of Hawaii and owned by the National Observatory of Japan. —  PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories
  • GOSAT, nicknamed "Ibuki" after the Japanese word for "vitality," will cover those countries and also the atmosphere over seas. —  msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 144 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old English æfter; see apo- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. (1) After, adverb, from Middle English after, æfter, efter, etc., from Anglo-Saxon æfter, adverb, after, afterward, back, = Old Saxon aftar, after = OFries. efter = Dutch achter = Icelandic aptr, aftr = Danish Swedish efter = Old High German aftar, after = Gothic (Moesogothic) aftra, after, again, backward, etc., = Greek ἀπωτέρω, further off, = OPers. apataram, further; all adverbs, comparative forms, from af-, ap- (= Gothic (Moesogothic) af = Anglo-Saxon and English of, preposition, q. v.), off, + comparative suffix -ter, -tar; hence after orig. meant ‘more off, further off.’ (2) After, preposition, from Middle English after, æfter, etc., from Anglo-Saxon æfter, preposition, after, behind, along, = Old Saxon aftar, after = OFries. efter = Dutch achter = Icelandic eptir, eftir = Danish Swedish efter = Old High German aftar, after, preposition; all from the adverb. (3) After, conjunction, is an elliptical use of the preposition
  2. from Middle English after, æfter, etc., adjective, merged with after, adverb, in loose comp. like after-past, etc.; from Anglo-Saxon æftera, feminine and neuter æftere, adjective, from æfter, adverb and preposition
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/ˈæftər/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word many times a day.

Recently looked up

marsh-land · arching · tableaus · hot-shot · longform

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

be careful! the razor is razor-sharp! · minty-fresh death threat · please stop sucking the monkeybread · beauregard · unicycle hockey