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postwar

postwar

32 4.0
Relating to the time just after a war, especially a big one
  • adjective
  • /ˈpoʊstwɔr/
translation icon : posbélico
  • I can imagine my mother in a postwar cocktail dress at an after-hours Greenwich Village bar.
  • postwar era
  • postwar period
  • postwar generation

Examples

  • By contrast, the American share of world output has been halved during the postwar period.

    Academic text (1990)
  • The reconstruction of the city focused on modernizing its infrastructure during the postwar period.

  • The goal was nothing less than to design the postwar international security and economic architecture.

    Academic text (2011)
  • General, I came over here to listen to your ideas on the rehabilitation of postwar Korea.

  • Couldn't get a job in postwar Germany.

  • He was educated during the postwar technological boom.

  • We had two rooms plus a kitchen and bath in an unpretentiously ramshackle postwar apartment building.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • The bases for the stability and relative prosperity of the postwar era are crumbling.

    Academic text (2011)
  • From a political-military perspective, the postwar decades saw the emergence of United States hegemony.

    Academic text (1990)
  • The dramatic reduction in international support for labor organizing during postwar democratization has severely affected the Salvadoran labor movement.

    Academic text (1999)

Synonyms

postbellum
vspostwar
  • Formal
9.9

The period right after a war when a country changes

relates to that period rather than naming the period itself

Antonyms

10 4.3

From the time before a war, often before World War I or II

Surface Forms

postwar positive

Morphology

postwar = war (transparent) = post + war + post

Meaning is directly 'after war' and follows the productive English prefix 'post-' meaning 'after'.

Etymology

Postwar is made of the parts post- meaning 'after' and war, so it means 'after a war'. Think of a city rebuilding its homes and people rebuilding their lives. That time is the postwar period.