postlude

From post- +‎ Latin lūdus (“play”) (modelled on prelude).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpəʊstluːd/

postlude (plural postludes)

1. (music) The final part of a piece; especially music played (normally on the organ) at the end of a church service.
   • 2023, Gustav Djupsjöbacka, The Songs of Jean Sibelius: Poetry, Music, Performance, page 81:

     In the Sibelian world of song, then, postludes would inevitably sound redundant or extraneous.

2. A concluding passage of text or speech; an epilogue or afterword.
   • 1995, Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2, Vintage (2019), page 313:

     This was Nabokov’s postlude to Lolita, where he relates the book’s genesis.

postlude (third-person singular simple present postludes, present participle postluding, simple past and past participle postluded)

1. (rare) To form a postlude (to); to end with a postlude.
   • 2003, Clive James, ‘Larkin Treads the Boards’, The Meaning of Recognition, Picador, published 2005, page 95:

     Mercifully never preceded by a drum-roll or postluded by a curtsey for applause, each poem seemed to arise from the surrounding prose, which Courtenay was successfully endeavouring to make sound as if it was being thought up on the spot.

• Postlude in the 1905 edition of the New International Encyclopedia.