I first heard the word antebellum at age 5 standing on the balcony of our suite of rooms in the exquisitely antebellum Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I was staring at the sea. Somebody said it meant before the American Civil War. Such a wonderful word just by the sound of it. It gives us bellicose and belligerent (either a noun or an adjective) and it’s rooted in the Latin bellum gerere - to wage war.
© 2024 John Oliver
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