English edit

Etymology edit

after- +‎ sense; apparently (re)coined by Henry James in the late 19th century.

Noun edit

aftersense

  1. A perception that follows an experience; a subsequent sense.
    • 1678, Bartholomew Ashwood, The Heavenly Trade, London: Samuel Lee, p. 309,[1]
      Peter got good from his fall, by keeping an after-sense of the evil of it on his heart.
    • 1878, Henry James, “An International Episode”, in Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode and Other Tales[2], New York: Scribner, published 1908, page 387:
      She privately ached—almost as under a dishonour—with the aftersense of having been inspected in that particular way.
    • 1975, Robert Alter, chapter 1, in Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre[3], page 2:
      [] the printed text, made easily available in thousands upon thousands of copies, which at best preserves from its literary antecedents a flickering, intermittent aftersense that what it says ought to be true because it is written in a book.
    • 1985, John W. McGhee, Introductory Statistics[4], St. Paul: West Publishing Company, Section 4.4, p. 134:
      The spiral is set in motion and observed by the patient. When stopped, the normal response is a continued aftersense of motion.
    • 2007, Toby Litt, Hospital[5], Penguin, published 2008, page 318:
      Sarah, who a moment before had been spattered in the face with bone fragments and blood, felt herself grow clean again—though an aftersense of having been touched by such matter remained.