antechamber, anti chamber

[In Fr. anti chambre ; Ital. anti camera . ] 1. Lit. An outer chamber or room in which people wait before being admitted to the inner or chief apartment. "When the host was elevated there was a strange confusion in the ante -chamber." Macaulay: Hist . Eng . , chap. iv. 2. Fig .: The mouth, viewed as the entrance to some of the interior parts of the physical frame. the mouth, the ante - chamber to the digestive canal."- Todd & Bouwman: Physiol. Anat ., vol. i., pp. 434. "The empre has the ante -chambers past, And this way moves with a disorder'd haste." Dryden: Aurungzebe, 11. 1.