afterscent

English

Etymology

after- +‎ scent

Noun

afterscent (plural afterscents)

1. 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,^[1]

     “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^[2], volume 2, London: Chapman and Hall, page 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^[3], Cape Town: Oxford University Press, pages 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^[4], New York: Knopf, published 1979, page 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^[5], 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