anteroom
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of anteroom
Explanation
An anteroom is a small room or entryway leading to a larger area. You might wait with a tour group in an anteroom before beginning your tour of a castle. You can use the word anteroom as a fancy, old-fashioned way to say "waiting room" or "vestibule." Museum visitors might pause in an anteroom before entering a large gallery, and the butler in an old movie might say, "Please wait in the anteroom." Another word for an anteroom is an antechamber — in fact the French root of both is antichambre, from the Latin anticamera, "room in front."
Vocabulary lists containing anteroom
Coraline
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: ante, anti
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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.
He wasn’t a man to sit idly in death’s anteroom, awaiting the grim reaper.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 13, 2026
One space, the first floor anteroom, is lined with red and gold silk, with centuries-old paintings hanging on the walls and an elaborately decorative fireplace standing beside a huge floor-to-ceiling window.
From BBC • Sep. 16, 2025
The affidavit recounts how someone identified only as “Witness 5” was seen on multiple days carrying either cardboard or bankers’ boxes in and out of the anteroom.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 5, 2023
You're not allowed to have an attorney in there with you, although there is a door and your lawyer can stand outside in the hall or anteroom where you're allowed to consult him or her.
From Salon • Feb. 18, 2023
The young lady who was in the backstage anteroom told me, “It sounded like an army had taken over. Somehow, I knew. I wouldn’t go and look. I wanted to remember him as he was.”
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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.
