antebellum

adjective an·te·bel·lum \ ˌan-ti-ˈbe-ləm \

|Updated on: 17 Jun 2018

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of antebellum

: existing before a war; especially : existing before the American Civil War

antebellum houses

the antebellum South

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Recent Examples of antebellum from the Web

African slaves built the American south; without free labor to work it, the worth of the land of antebellum plantation owners was questionable.

— andrea gronvall, Chicago Reader, "History repeats itself over and over again at the African Diaspora Film Festival," 8 June 2018
The biggest racial fear of the antebellum white North was a black migration northward.

— WSJ, "The North Helped Reconstruction’s Failure," 1 June 2018
The Warfield was a glamorous old theater with an elaborately detailed rococo interior, grand antebellum-style spiral stairwells, and enormous chandeliers.

— rachel kushner, Vogue, "Rachel Kushner on the San Francisco Dives of Her Youth, and That Time She Tended Bar With Keith Richards," 27 Apr. 2018
Walker had been subject to protests in the early 1990s by an older generation of black artists — including Howardena Pindell and Betye Saar — for using racist antebellum imagery and stereotypes in her silhouetted wall works.

— aaron gilbreath, Longreads, "‘Open Casket’ and the Question of Empathy," 28 Mar. 2017
Imagine someone walking around in a voluminous sci-fi bridal gown or an antebellum hoop skirt concocted by a RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant.

— kevin riordan, Philly.com, "She's the bag monster from New Jersey and she wants you to quit plastic. So do I," 14 May 2018
North of a Confederate monument in Forsyth Park, tourists walk through the historic district, lined with cafés, antique shops, and grand antebellum homes, oblivious to the poverty a few blocks away.

— rachel aviv, The New Yorker, "The Spy Who Came Home," 30 Apr. 2018
One of the Montgomery's most recognizable antebellum homes is the centerpiece of a new boutique hotel project.

— william thornton, AL.com, "Montgomery's Murphy House to become boutique hotel," 15 Mar. 2018
Walker plugged into nearly all the major networks of antebellum black activism.

— kenyon gradert, Smithsonian, "The Book That Spooked the South," 8 Feb. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'antebellum.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Antebellum means "before the war," but it wasn’t widely associated with the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) until after that conflict was over. The word comes from the Latin phrase ante bellum (literally, "before the war"), and its earliest known print appearance in English dates back to the 1840s. The term's earliest known association with the Civil War is found in an 1862 diary entry: "Her face was as placid and unmoved as in antebellum days." The author of that line, Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, recorded her observations of life during the Civil War in A Diary from Dixie, often while accompanying her husband, an officer in the Confederate army, on his missions.