Etymology

status quo ante

Today it means: The state of things as they were before; a preexisting state of affairs. Full definition →

Latin stātus quō ante
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The story

  1. Latin · derived fromstātus quō ante“the way things were before”
  2. English todaystatus quo ante

From the Latin stātus quō ante (“the way things were before”), possibly from stātus quō ante bellum (“the way things were before the war”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.