Definition of "ante" []

• 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. (noun)
• 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). (noun)
• Games To put (one's stake) into the pool in poker. (verb-transitive)
• To pay: Let's ante up the bill. (verb-transitive)
• Games To put one's stake into the pool in poker: Don't look at your cards until everyone has anted. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A better quantification of these effects ex ante is critical."
• "To say that soldiers have "nothing to complain about ex ante" is to assert that they have already been paid everything they are owed, as though the military service can be reduced to a purely economic transaction."
• "Definitely the easy way to up the ante is to add a new trick."