afterwave

plural afterwaves

1. A wave (in literal and figurative senses) that follows something.

   1801, Robert Charles Dallas (translator), The Natural History of Volcanoes by the Abbé Ordinaire, London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, Chapter 22, p. 158, From the fierce burning stream, the afterwaves keep those over which they flow, in a state of fusion:

   4 more examples

   Simultaneously with the lull in Germany we are beginning to hear of all these preparations [in Italy], which the lull renders comparatively unimportant. The news of them comes as a sort of afterwave of the German crisis.

   1866 April 28, Saturday Review, volume 21, number 548, page 490

   [I] hurried on […] to Verona, and my first view of Italy’s monumental record of her past. I caught a sort of afterwave of the patriot’s angry shudder as I looked upon the forts which had recently made one of the chief overawing strongholds of the Austrian domination.

   1918, James Sully, chapter 5, in My Life and Friends: A Psychologist’s Memories, London: T. Fisher Unwin, page 120

   Sounds, the mild thunder of the night waves hitting calmer water and the sigh of retreating afterwaves, now joined together with what we saw.

   1968, Ayi Kwei Armah, chapter 6, in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 84

   He moved in her. She was in one of the afterwaves of coming when he began.

   2003, Norman Rush, chapter 37, in Mortals, New York: Knopf, pages 705–706