antechamber
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of antechamber
1650–60; earlier antichamber < French antichambre, as translation of Italian anticamera, equivalent to anti- (< Latin ante- ante- ) + camera chamber
Explanation
An antechamber is an entryway or a small room that leads into a larger one. If you visit a friend who lives in a mansion, her butler may ask you to wait in the antechamber while he summons her. You're most likely to come across an antechamber in a very grand building or home — in most houses, a similar room would probably be called a "foyer" or a "hall." Sometimes the area where you wait before entering a museum or office is called an antechamber, but it's more often just a "waiting room." Palaces and crypts and pyramids often have antechambers. The word comes from the French antichambre.
Vocabulary lists containing antechamber
Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: ante, anti
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Before You Know It: Ante
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The Night Circus
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Who should then be ushered into the same antechamber but Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister and right-hand man of ruling Socialist President François Mitterrand, Chirac’s arch-rival.
From BBC • Sep. 28, 2024
A portrait of the thin-mustachioed director as a saintly figure sits alongside stained glass recreations of some of his most famous collaborators, including Divine and David Lochary, in a chapel-like antechamber.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 16, 2023
As darkness blanketed the city, the only spectacle left was in parliament, where teenagers and young men bedded down for another night on the mattresses they have laid out in the grand antechamber.
From Washington Post • Aug. 2, 2022
They also dug up a base thought to belong to “Skanda on a Peacock,” which had sat beside “Skanda and Shiva” in the same antechamber.
From New York Times • Nov. 21, 2021
There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked stacks and the other tomes.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
