Hereafter means from this point onward. Hereafter known as, hereafter referred to, the hereafter.
In legal and formal writing it introduces a definition: hereafter referred to as the Company. In older or religious use it means the life after death, and as a noun the hereafter is that life. Note the family of here- words that survive almost only in contracts: herein, hereby, hereto, herewith, heretofore — all of them ways of pointing at the document itself.
1adverbhereafterFrom this point onward.
“The company named above will hereafter be referred to as the Supplier.”
2nounlifeThe life after death.
“She believed she would meet her husband again in the hereafter.”
hereafter is a point in time, or the afterlife.
Old English heraefter is here plus after, meaning later on. English kept a whole set of these compounds for legal writing, where they do a job ordinary words do clumsily.
Old English
hēræfter — in the aftertime; later on
English, today
hereafter
From Old English hēræfter (“in the aftertime; later on”). by surface analysis, here + after.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire