aftersound

plural aftersounds

1. A sound that persists or remains audible after its source has ceased to produce it; the perception of such a sound.

   Edward was awakened that night by a loud clattering noise which left an after-sound of high ringing.

   1985, Iris Murdoch, The Good Apprentice, Penguin, published 2001, Part 2, p. 189

   3 more examples

   […] the strings of an instrument, […] being strucken with the hand, do verberate the ayre in its first sound, and are reverberated by the ayre to an after-sound.

   1659, Nathanael Homes, A Sermon Preached before Parliament, London: Edward Brewster, published 1660, page 33

   He fired the Winchester twice again, into the distance, then lowered it, the ringing aftersound of the gunfire in his ears.

   1970, Elmore Leonard, chapter 7, in Valdez is Coming, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, page 132

   And the aftersound of the music played in the light-filled drawing room would grow closer to pure silence each year, until time ended.

   2021, Colm Tóibín, chapter 18, in The Magician, New York: Scribner

   Synonyms: echo, resonance, reverberation · Antonyms: foresound

2. acousticsThe second, slower phase of decay in the sound made by a piano string when it is struck.
3. obsoletehuman sciencesA weaker sound that immediately follows a more salient one, such as the second, less prominent vowel sound in a falling diphthong.

   They [gu and qu] were not groups formed of a guttural stop and the semi-vowel v, but guttural stops with a labial aftersound; the latter receiving a very much weaker articulation than the semi-vowel v.

   1910, Max Niedermann, Outlines of Latin Phonetics, London: Routledge, page 46

   1 more example

   1881, Louis Lucien Bonaparte, “The simple sounds of all the living Slavonic languages compared with those of the principal Neo-Latin and Germano-Scandinavian Tongues,” Transactions of the Philological Society, 1880-1881, p. 377, In English I cannot hear the sound of Italian o chiuso, but only that of (o 5) followed by an aftersound, as in home, or without this aftersound, as in more.