Word.ws English Dictionary

prewar

UK/pɹiːˈwɔː//pɹiˈwɔɹ/

prewar is the alternative form of pre-war.

Meaning of pre-war

Adjective

pre-war (not comparable)

  1. Before the most recent or significant war in a culture's history.
  2. Before the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
  3. Before the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
    • The hanging-bowl lampshade in marbled glass was two decades pre-war – the kind that marked out aged people.1998, Derek Beaven, chapter 9, in Acts of Mutiny, London: Fourth Estate, →ISBN, part 1 (Motion), page 34
  4. Especially pre-war architecture: buildings (particularly in and around New York) built between 1900 and about 1940.
  5. Between the end of World War I in 1918 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939; interwar, especially Weimar Republic Germany.

Antonyms of prewar

Origin of prewar

From pre- + war.

Questions about prewar

What is prewar the alternative form of?
Prewar is the alternative form of pre-war.
How do you pronounce prewar?
Prewar is pronounced /pɹiːˈwɔː/ (UK).

Words near prewar in the dictionary

  1. prevues
  2. prevuing
  3. Prew
  4. prewait
  5. prewandering
  6. prewar
  7. prewarm
  8. prewarmed
  9. prewarming
  10. prewarms
  11. prewarn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prewar (page history and authors); pre-war (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Neøn-prewar.wav.

Cite this entry: “prewar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prewar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.