Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A smaller room serving as an entryway into a larger room.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A chamber or an apartment through which access is had to a principal apartment, and in which persons wait for audience. Formerly also spelled antichamber.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A chamber or apartment before the chief apartment and leading into it, in which persons wait for audience; an outer chamber. See lobby.
  • noun A space viewed as the outer chamber or the entrance to an interior part.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small room used as an entryway or reception area to a larger room.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a large entrance or reception room or area

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French antichambre : anti-, before (from Latin ante-; see ante–) + chambre, chamber (from Old French chaumbre; see chamber).]

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Examples

  • Of her influence we need no better evidence than the fact that her salon was called the antechamber to the Academie Francaise.

    The Women of the French Salons Amelia Ruth Gere Mason

  • The moment we stepped over the threshold, on the right hand of the passage we found ourselves ushered into what in other countries would be called the antechamber; the ground floor, however, was muddy and filthy, a large fire was burning,

    John James Audubon Burroughs, John, 1837-1921 1902

  • The only article of furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the charge of a young hospitaller.

    The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Complete ��mile Zola 1871

  • The only article of furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the charge of a young hospitaller.

    The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete Lourdes, Rome and Paris ��mile Zola 1871

  • The only article of furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the charge of a young hospitaller.

    The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 2 ��mile Zola 1871

  • In preparing to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry, that the usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is to think cursorily on topics connected with it, until what I have called the antechamber is well filled with cognate ideas.

    Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development Francis Galton 1866

  • On either side of the interior door of the antechamber was a turnstile or tourelle, which enabled the inmates within to receive anything from the outside world without being themselves seen.

    The Golden Dog William Kirby 1861

  • First, an ante-chamber, at the farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the divisions of the ceilings.

    Sons of the Soil Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Lovely because it suggests that there was a time before history began, when people hung around in a kind of antechamber waiting to be called forth to kick off the human story.

    The Making of the British Landscape by Francis Pryor 2010

  • Echoing Myhrvold, we might charitably say that de Grey's proposals exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait possibly in vain for independent verification.

    The Speculist: July 2006 Archives 2006

Comments

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  • "Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. "

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 27, 2007

  • wonderful quote

    March 11, 2007