adjective:
before or existing before a war, especially the American Civil War; prewar: the antebellum plantations of Georgia.
Some of these ornate wooden structures are vast, every bit as grand in their own cluttered fashion as the great antebellum Greek Revival houses of the Garden District, which always put me in mind of temples, or the imposing town houses of the French Quarter itself.
-- Anne Rice, "The Tale of the Body Thief," 1992
Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind.
-- Eric Van Lustbader, "First Daughter," 2008
Antebellum entered English in the 1860s. It literally means "before the war" in Latin.
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