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aftermath

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The second growth of grass or hay that springs up after the first crop has been mown; later extended to mean the consequences following a significant event.

Detailed Definition
Aftermath derives from Old English "maeth" (a mowing) with the prefix "after," originally describing the second growth of grass that appears in a field after the hay crop has been cut in summer—a valuable additional crop for late-season grazing. Its extension into its current dominant meaning—the consequences following a disaster or significant event—is a remarkably clear etymological metaphor: just as a second growth springs from cut stalks, events generate consequences that follow from the original action. Poets aware of the word's agricultural origin can use it with full consciousness of both meanings simultaneously: a poem's "aftermath" is both the new growth that follows from cutting and the consequences of what has occurred. This double meaning enriches elegies and war poems that use aftermath in its extended sense.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Keats's "To Autumn," the aftermath of harvest is implied in the stubble fields where "gathering swallows twitter in the skies," showing the second growth that follows the main crop; The word originally meant the second grass crop after mowing — "aftermath" literally means "after-mowing," making it a perfect metaphor for consequences that spring from prior action; A poet might write "the aftermath of war lay green across the field, new shoots rising from the scarred earth" to use the agricultural and emotional meanings simultaneously; Wilfred Owen's war poetry implicitly draws on "aftermath" to describe the terrible second harvest of grief and loss that follows battle, the regrowth of suffering after violence; Tennyson uses aftermath imagery when describing landscapes that bear the marks of past events while new life pushes through, blending the seasonal and the elegiac; The dual meaning — new grass growth and the consequences of events — makes aftermath one of the most semantically rich agricultural terms to migrate into everyday English.
Additional Notes
The word "aftermath" is a perfect example of how agricultural vocabulary has migrated into everyday English while retaining its etymological roots. Students should note the two-part etymology: "after" + "math" (from Old English "maeth," a mowing), which literally means "after-mowing." This dual operation — the literal second grass crop and the figurative consequences following an event — makes aftermath one of the most pedagogically valuable words for demonstrating semantic broadening. In poetry analysis, students should watch for contexts where both meanings operate simultaneously, particularly in war poetry and elegy. Related terms include "tilth," "mow," and "windrow," all of which belong to the haymaking lexicon. The word's transition from agricultural to general usage was complete by the seventeenth century, meaning that even poets who use it in its modern sense are unknowingly invoking the hayfield.
Also Known As
aftergrass fog rowen second crop Denouement Dénouement
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