ante-camera
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.32 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
5
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An antechamber, specifically one where visitors wait before being given audience with an influential person such as a pope or monarch.
Example Sentences
- "As it hapned to that wiſe Philoſopher who being clad in a meane but honeſt habit, preſſed amongſt the rest to the Kings Ante-camera, or with-drawing Chamber, where hee vſed to giue Audience, hauing very neceſſary occaſion to ſpeake vnto him."
- "Forget I never can, to my last hour, / Sev’n years ago, when ordered to Vienna, to obtain / Remounts for our brave army, / How, from one Ante-Camera, away / To another I was shov’d; suffer’d to stand / Whole hours under the arch, / As though I came to beg my pension; / At last a Capuchin was sent me, / I thought ’twas for my sins."
- "‘The orders are that no one enters the ante-camera this morning.’ […] [Giacomo] Antonelli made various difficulties about an audience, so that Rosmini, displeased at the petty pretexts of the Cardinal, said frankly that if he was to be chased out of Gaeta without an audience of the Pope, he should consider it an atrocious injury. This somewhat mollified the Cardinal, who at last said that he would introduce him to an audience. He went to the Pope’s chamber, and was absent a good half hour, Rosmini waiting in the ante-camera."
Etymology
From Middle French anticamera and its etymon Italian anticamera, with substitution of ante-, originally after Spanish antecámara, itself after Italian.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: anticamera, antecámara
Inflected Forms
ante-cameras (plural)
anti-camera (alternative)