aftersmile

plural aftersmiles

1. A smile that follows something.

   No night drops down upon the troubled breast, / When heaven’s aftersmile, earth’s teardrops gain, / And mother finds her home and far-off rest.

   1893 August, Mary Baker Eddy, “The Mother’s Evening Prayer”, in Christian Science Journal, volume 11, number 5, page 193

   3 more examples

   […] there were funerals as the result of a holy effort (for holy effort still we avow it to have been, and the aftersmile of God hath proved it so).

   1861, Charles Spurgeon, “Accidents, Not Punishments”, in The New Park Street and Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 7, London: Passmore and Alabaster, published 1862, page 636

   Smiling with imperturbable tenderness, Mrs. Selborne thrust out her heavy legs slowly to swell with warm ripe smack his gift of flowered green-silk garters. Wetting his thumb with sly thin aftersmile, he told.

   1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Scribner, published 1957, Part 2, Chapter 21, p. 236

   New truths were coming to her, and she at first laughed at them, laughed at what her own head was telling her […]. Her aftersmile spread into the doubt in her eyes when her head told her that she would soon be able to carry the daylight on her back.

   1986, Kojo Laing, chapter 3, in Search Sweet Country, San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, pages 33–34

2. A facial expression that follows a smile.

   It made her smile, just a little one, and that was good, but the smile got switched off pretty soon and somehow that made it worse, because there was such a contrast in her face between smile and aftersmile.

   1992, Judith Saxton, chapter 4, in This Royal Breed,, New York: St. Martin’s Press, page 71

1. not comparableFollowing a smile.

   The smile was gone, but the face still had an aftersmile glow on it;

   1988, Herbert Gold, chapter 7, in Dreaming, New York: Donald I. Fine, page 102