after the Lord Mayor's show en · ADP
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Etymology
From the proverb "After the Lord Mayor's show comes the dust-cart" (or "donkey-cart", or "shit-cart"). Bringing up the rear of the Lord Mayor's Show is a team to clean the manure of the pageant's horses.
Meanings
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(idiomatic) Said of a disappointing or mundane event occurring straight after an exciting, magnificent, or triumphal event.
"After the Lord Mayor's Show." Freddy looked up from reading Punch. "What is, old fruit?" "The excitement's gone. Back to dull monotony."
2006, Jeremy Carrad, Running on Empty, Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie, →ISBN, page 40:The All Whites came into this match hotfoot from their stunning victory over Castres last Tuesday which took them into the semi-final of the prototype European Cup. ... For a while it looked as if it might be a case of after the Lord Mayor's show as Swansea struggled with one of their dozy moods, against Treorchy.
1995 December 10, Clem Thomas, “White hot Swansea”, in The Independent (UK):as is usual on all such occasions, after gaiety comes squalor; or, as we observe in respect to the annual pageant of the City of London that "after the Lord Mayor's Show comes a,—donkey-cart,
1864, George Waters, Indian gleanings and thoughts of the past, G.H. Windeyer, Chatham, page 154: