BELL comes from the Latin word meaning “war.” Bellona was the little- known Roman goddess of war; her husband, Mars, was the god of war.
antebellum: Existing before a war, especially before the American Civil War (1861–65).
• When World War I was over, the French nobility found it impossible to return to their extravagant antebellum way of life.
Even countries that win a war often end up worse off than they had been before, and the losers almost always do. So antebellum often summons up images of ease, elegance, and entertainment that disappeared in the postwar years. In the American South, the antebellum way of life depended on a social structure, based on slavery, that collapsed after the Civil War; Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind shows the nostalgia and bitterness felt by wealthy Southerners after the war more than the relief and anticipation experienced by those released from slavery. In Europe, World War I shattered the grand life of the upper classes, even in victorious France and Britain, and changed society hugely in the space of just four years.
bellicose: Warlike, aggressive, quarrelsome.
• The more bellicose party always got elected whenever there was tension along the border and the public believed that military action would lead to security.
Since bellicose describes an attitude that hopes for actual war, the word is generally applied to nations and their leaders. In the 20th century, it was commonly used to describe such figures as Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, Italy's Benito Mussolini, and Japan's General Tojo, leaders who believed their countries had everything to gain by starting wars. The international relations of a nation with a bellicose foreign policy tend to be stormy and difficult, and bellicosity usually makes the rest of the world very uneasy.
belligerence: Aggressiveness, combativeness.
• The belligerence in Turner's voice told them that the warning was a serious threat.
Unlike bellicose and bellicosity, the word belligerence can be used at every level from the personal to the global. The belligerence of Marlon Brando's performances as the violent Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire electrified the country in the 1940s and '50s. At the same time, belligerent speeches by leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States throughout the Cold War were keeping the world on edge. Belligerent is even a noun; the terrible war in the Congo in recent years, for example, has involved seven nations as belligerents.
rebellion: Open defiance and opposition, sometimes armed, to a person or thing in authority.
• A student rebellion that afternoon in Room 13 resulted in the new substitute teacher racing out of the building in tears.
Plenty of teenagers rebel against their parents in all kinds of ways. But a rebellion usually involves a group. Armed rebellions are usually put down by a country's armed forces, or at least kept from expanding beyond a small area. The American War of Independence was first viewed by the British as a minor rebellion that would soon run its course, but this particular rebellion led to a full-fledged revolution—that is, the overthrow of a government. Rebellion, armed or otherwise, has often alerted those in power that those they control are very unhappy.
PAC is related to the Latin words for “agree” and “peace.” The Pacific Ocean—that is, the “Peaceful Ocean”—was named by Ferdinand Magellan because it seemed so calm after he had sailed through the storms near Cape Horn. (Magellan obviously had never witnessed a Pacific typhoon.)
pacify: (1) To soothe anger or agitation. (2) To subdue by armed action.
• It took the police hours to pacify the angry demonstrators.
Someone stirred up by a strong emotion can usually be pacified by some kind words and the removal of its causes. Unhappy babies are often given a rubber pacifier for sucking to make them stop crying. During the Vietnam War, pacification of an area meant using armed force to drive out the enemy, which might be followed by bringing the local people over to our side by building schools and providing social services. But an army can often bring “peace” by pure force, without soothing anyone's emotions.
pacifist: A person opposed to war or violence, especially someone who refuses to bear arms or to fight, on moral or religious grounds.
• Her grandfather had fought in the Marines in World War II, but in his later years he had become almost a pacifist, opposing every war for one reason or another.
The Quakers and the Jehovah's Witnesses are pacifist religious groups, and Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King are probably the most famous American pacifists. Like these groups and individuals, pacifists haven't always met with sympathy or understanding. Refusing to fight ever, for any reason, calls for strong faith in one's own moral or religious convictions, since pacifism during wartime has often gotten people persecuted and even thrown in prison.
pact: An agreement between two or more people or groups; a treaty or formal agreement between nations to deal with a problem or to resolve a dispute.
• The girls made a pact never to reveal what had happened on that terrifying night in the abandoned house.
Pact has “peace” at its root because a pact often ends a period of unfriendly relations. The word is generally used in the field of international relations, where diplomats may speak of an “arms pact,” a “trade pact,” or a “fishing- rights pact.” But it may also be used for any solemn agreement or promise between two people; after all, whenever two parties shake hands on a deal, they're not about to go to war with each other.
pace: Contrary to the opinion of.
• She had only three husbands, pace some Hollywood historians who claim she had as many as six.
This word looks like another that is much more familiar, but notice how it's pronounced. It is used only by intellectuals, and often printed in italics so that the reader doesn't mistake it for the other word. Writers use it when correcting an opinion that many people believe; for example, “The costs of the program, pace some commentators, will not be significant.” So what does pace have to do with peace? Because it says “Peace to them (that is, to the people I'm mentioning)—I don't want to start an argument; I just want to correct the facts.”
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