aftersmile

after- +‎ smile

aftersmile (plural aftersmiles)

1. A smile that follows something.
   • 1861, Charles Spurgeon, “Accidents, Not Punishments” in The New Park Street and Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1862, Volume 7, p. 636,

     […] 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).

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

     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.

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

     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.

   • 1986, Kojo Laing, Search Sweet Country, San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, Chapter 3, pp. 33-34,

     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.

2. A facial expression that follows a smile.
   • 1992, Judith Saxton, This Royal Breed, New York: St. Martin’s Press, Chapter 4, p. 71,

     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.

aftersmile (not comparable)

1. Following a smile.
   • 1988, Herbert Gold, Dreaming, New York: Donald I. Fine, Chapter 7, p. 102,

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