Country group Lady Antebellum changes name to Lady A

[Collimator]

21. The hooped skirts comes to my mind at first.

And that fairly pretty image is probably why the group originally chose the word paired with the term, "Lady".

But I always knew what the word meant, and I did wonder about the appropriateness of the band name in this day and age.

In other ways, the word isn't good or bad in itself. One can write about "the work of abolitionists in the Antebellum period", or one can talk about "the gracious Antebellum mansions". The feeling a person brings to those phrases can certainly vary.

I think for some people the "bellum" part of the word is misleading, because "bell" sounds pretty even though the actual word is a cousin of the term, "bellicose".

Saw this online and it describes what I am saying. (And better than I am doing.)

www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/bellicose
Bellicose means eager for war. Bellicose is from Latin bellum "war." A near synonym is belligerent, from the same Latin noun. You may wonder if they're connected to the Latin bellus "pretty, handsome," which gives us the names Bella or Isabella, as well as belle "a beautiful woman." They're not.