[AFTER- 6, 8.]

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  1.  A subsequent or second thought.

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a. 1661.  Holyday, Juvenal, 10. To write but on one side of the leaf, leaving the other for any after-thoughts.

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1710.  Palmer, Proverbs, 157. Ill nature, the afterthoughts of which strike horror and regret.

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1846.  Grote, Greece, I. xxi. 551. Forced into unity … by the afterthought of a subsequent age.

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  2.  Reflection after the act; a thought that did not occur at the time when the matter to which it refers was under consideration: hence a later expedient, explanation or device.

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1684.  Charnock, Attrib. God (1834), I. 749. He cannot discover anything afterwards that may move him to take up after-thoughts.

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1751.  Young, Night Th., vii. 889. Annihilation is an after-thought, A monstrous wish, unborn till virtue dies.

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1760.  Raper, in Phil. Trans., LI. 799. The portico was an after-thought.

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1846.  Mill, Logic, II. iii. § 3 (1868), 211. If any reasons were assigned, it would be necessarily an afterthought.

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