Hereafter

How to spell hereafter

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce hereafter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hereafter mean?

1. adverbFrom this time forward; in the future or in what follows.
2. nounLife or existence after death.

Hereafter in a sentence

• adverb

  The company shall hereafter be known by its new trading name.

• noun

  The poem imagines the hereafter as a realm of endless light.

• adverb

  All charges incurred hereafter are the responsibility of the tenant.

• noun

  Many ancient cultures buried possessions for use in the hereafter.

Where does hereafter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hereafter is a native English compound stitched together from two very old words, here and after, both inherited from Old English. The first element, her, simply meant 'in this place', while after meant 'following' or 'later in time', and the joining of the two gave the Old English herefter, meaning 'from this point onward'. The word kept that temporal sense, 'from now on' or 'in the time to come', throughout the medieval period and remains the primary meaning today. By extension, writers also began using it as a noun for the life that comes after death, 'the hereafter', a usage that grew especially common in religious and poetic prose. Because both halves are everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the only real spelling care is remembering it is written solid as one word, with no space and no hyphen.

How the word is built

• here (this place/time)
• after (following, later)