aftermathyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[aftermath 词源字典]
aftermath: [16] Originally, and literally, an aftermath was a second crop of grass or similar grazing vegetation, grown after an earlier crop in the same season had been harvested. Already by the mid 17th century it had taken on the figurative connotations of ‘resulting condition’ which are today its only living sense. The -math element comes from Old English mǣth ‘mowing’, a noun descended from the Germanic base *mǣ, source of English mow.
=> mow[aftermath etymology, aftermath origin, 英语词源]
aftermath (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1520s, originally a second crop of grass grown after the first had been harvested, from after + -math, a dialectal word, from Old English mæð "a mowing, cutting of grass" (see math (n.2)). Figurative sense by 1650s. Compare French regain "aftermath," from re- + Old French gain, gaain "grass which grows in meadows that have been mown," from Frankish or some other Germanic source similar to Old High German weida "grass, pasture"