ante

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Games The stake that each poker player must put into the pool before receiving a hand or before receiving new cards. See Synonyms at bet.
2. n. A price to be paid, especially as one's share; cost: "Whether they could actually turn back Soviet policy depended on many factors that Moscow might yet choose to test by upping the ante” ( Foreign Affairs).
3. v. Games To put (one's stake) into the pool in poker.
4. v. To pay: Let's ante up the bill.
5. v. Games To put one's stake into the pool in poker: Don't look at your cards until everyone has anted.
6. v. To pay up.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In the game of poker, the stake or bet deposited in the pool by each player before drawing new cards; also, the receptacle for the stakes.
2. In the game of poker, to deposit stakes in the pool or common receptacle for them: commonly used in the phrase to ante up.
3. In heraldry, ingrafted: said of one color or metal broken into another by means of dovetailed, nebulé, embattled, or ragulé edges. Also enté.
4. A prefix of Latin origin, originally only in compounds or derivatives taken from the Latin or formed from Latin elements, as in antecessor, antepenultimate, antemeridian, etc., but now a familiar English formative, meaning before, either in place or in time. It forms— compound nouns, with the accent on the prefix, in which ante- has the attributive force of fore, anterior, as in antechamber, anteroom, antedate, etc.; compound adjectives, with the accent on the radical element, in which ante- retains its original prepositional force, before, governing the noun expressed or understood, as in antemundane, antediluvian, antemeridian, etc. Such compounds, whether having an adjective termination, as in the examples just cited, or lacking it, as in ante-war, are in fact prepositional phrases like the Latin ante bellum, ante mortem (which are also used as English adjectives). Compare anti-.

Wiktionary

1. n. A price or cost, as in up the ante.
2. n. poker In poker and other games, the contribution made by all players to the pot before dealing the cards.
3. v. To pay the ante in poker. Often used ante up.
4. v. To make an investment in money, effort, or time before knowing one's chances.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Poker Playing) Each player's stake, which is put into the pool before (ante) the game begins.
2. v. To put up (an ante).

WordNet 3.0

1. v. place one's stake
2. n. (poker) the initial contribution that each player makes to the pot