afterscent

plural afterscents

1. A scent that follows something; a scent remaining after its source is no longer present.

   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. […] ”

   4 more examples

   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.”

   1890, William Beatty-Kingston, “The Triumphs of Smoke”, in A Journalist’s Jottings, volume 2, London: Chapman and Hall, page 137

   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.

   1952, Nadine Gordimer, “Another Part of the Sky”, in Short Stories from Southern Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, pages 30–31

   Carlotta tells me I am less passionate. It is morning. She has just left, leaving behind her a musky afterscent of dissatisfaction.

   1976, John Updike, “From the Journal of a Leper”, in Problems and Other Stories, New York: Knopf, published 1979, page 194

   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

   2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, New York: Penguin Press, Part 2, p. 111