epilogue

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a literary term for the concluding section of a work that comes after the main narrative has ended, providing additional context, resolution, or reflection on what the story's events have meant, and by extension an idiom for any final statement, act, or phase that follows what seemed to be the conclusion of a larger story; as an idiom epilogue describes events, conversations, or developments that occur after an apparent ending and that retrospectively colour its meaning — a postscript to a life's chapter that reveals consequences or meanings not visible at the moment of conclusion; in literary usage the epilogue allows writers to address the reader directly after the fictional frame has been set aside, to sketch the later fates of characters, or to articulate the moral or thematic significance that the narrative itself enacted; the word's Greek roots — epi meaning upon and logos meaning word — suggest the idea of a word placed after, a final commentary on what came before