{"id":2375,"date":"2024-12-19T19:17:40","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T00:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2375"},"modified":"2024-12-19T19:19:56","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T00:19:56","slug":"word-of-the-week-aftermath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2024\/12\/19\/word-of-the-week-aftermath\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Aftermath"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cover<\/a>So we come to the end of another year, with our final post for 2024. My aftermath of a final semester of full-time employment, surprisingly, goes to the root-meaning of this week’s word.<\/p>\n

The OED<\/a> is cooperating tonight. It informs me that as early as the 15th century, an aftermath meant “A second crop or new growth of grass (or occasionally another plant used as feed) after the first has been mown or harvested.” As fate and weather had it, I had tilled and sown with winter Ryegrass a hillside on our farm. This will be tilled in for Spring, as green manure for sunflowers and buckwheat. So my Rye is indeed an aftermath.<\/p>\n

But why “math”? Some early examples include “after mathe” or “after meath,” and that gets closer to the etymology in play. If you look at The OED entry<\/a> on “after mowth” we have it: the crop planted after mowing. How “mowth” became “math” escapes me.<\/p>\n

In my case, I hopped on the tractor to mow down the weedy remains of the summer crop before tilling.\u00a0Now we have green shoots of Ryegrass as our aftermath.<\/p>\n

Figuratively, the word came to mean a lot more, usually what follows an event, usually a destructive or traumatic one. Let’s hope we don’t need to use that meaning and instead can re-seed our fields. Or we can listen to the Rolling Stones’ album, as I did in the aftermath of the Disco era, when we college students rediscovered all that was raw and urgent about Rock and Roll.<\/p>\n

May your holidays be bright ones, and if you think of any words or metaphors to share with the community in 2025, send them to me at jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu or by leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image source: UK cover of the album, from Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we come to the end of another year, with our final post for 2024. My aftermath of a final semester of full-time employment, surprisingly, goes to the root-meaning of this week’s word. The OED is cooperating tonight. It informs me that as early as the 15th century, an aftermath meant “A second crop or … Continue reading Word of the Week! Aftermath<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Cj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2377,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375\/revisions\/2377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}