moonlight-and-magnolia

adjective

Of or relating to romanticized historical portrayals of the American South, often depicting slavery in a positive light.

Meanings

adjectivemoonlight-and-magnolia (not comparable)

alternative moonlight-and-magnolias

  1. not comparableOf or relating to romanticized historical portrayals of the American South, often depicting slavery in a positive light.

    Here the myth of a moonlight-and-magnolia South founders on dry empirical realities.

    2013, David Chinitz, Which Sin to Bear?, page 34
    2 more examples

    The romantic South of myth and legend, the “moonlight and magnolia” South with which plantation epics captured the national imagination in the era of the Lost Cause, has acquired a nightmarish quality; […]

    2014, Cynthia Stretch, Cristina Alsina Rísquez, Innocence and Loss, page 33

    If a white employer could take so much interest in the child of a black employee, in whom he had no property interest, that would illustrate—as did Hentz's other fiction—the moonlight and magnolia world of Southerners' concern for their slaves.

    2016, Alfred L. Brophy, University, Court, and Slave, page 84
Cite this entry
APA

moonlight-and-magnolia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moonlight-and-magnolia

MLA

“moonlight-and-magnolia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moonlight-and-magnolia. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “moonlight-and-magnolia,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moonlight-and-magnolia.

Source: moonlight-and-magnolia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.