afterglow
Americannoun
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the glow left after a light has disappeared, such as that sometimes seen after sunset
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the glow of an incandescent metal after the source of heat has been removed
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physics luminescence persisting on the screen of a cathode-ray tube or in a gas-discharge tube after the power supply has been disconnected
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a trace, impression, etc, of past emotion, brilliance, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of afterglow
Explanation
An afterglow is a strip of rose-colored light in the sky that you sometimes see after the sun goes down. You should look for the afterglow after you watch the sunset. While an afterglow is actually caused by dust in the atmosphere, the radiant, glowing effect in the sky is much more beautiful than this makes it sound. You can also use the word afterglow in a figurative way, to describe the way you feel after something really wonderful happens to you: "I basked in the afterglow that followed my successful opening night on Broadway."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Maybe it’s embedded human instinct, an afterglow of developing self-awareness of our own mortality, to consider existential risks.
From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2026
Infantino had been basking in the warm afterglow of a highly successful World Cup -- the largest ever with 48 teams and co-hosted by three countries, Canada, Mexico and the US.
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
As the fireworks clear from Spain’s 1-0 victory over Argentina Sunday, let’s take a moment to bask in the afterglow and pungent ranch dressing burps of the just-completed 2026 North American World Cup.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
The cosmic microwave background — the afterglow of the Big Bang — shows a small but persistent asymmetry: a preference for one spatial orientation over its mirror image.
From Science Daily ● May 22, 2026
The sun had just gone down, and its afterglow was backlighting the city, which formed low cliffs around the bucolic void to the idle stockyards.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
Still, even with two afterglows in hand, I cannot definitively answer the questions I originally set out to answer.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 17, 2020
And finally, right at the end of graduate school, two actual cosmological afterglows, one of which turned out to have an associated gamma-ray burst.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 17, 2020
For my thesis, I set out to find afterglows without relying on a trigger from a satellite.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 17, 2020
Astronomers looked fruitlessly for afterglows from short-duration gamma-ray bursts found by BeppoSAX and other satellites.
From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016
Towards this end of August, a southern warmth, diffusing languor, rises and spreads towards the north, with luminous afterglows and stray rays from a distant sun, which float over the Breton seas.
From An Iceland Fisherman by M. Jules Cambon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
