ante- or anti-? These two prefixes are sometimes confused. Ante- means ‘before’ or ‘in front of’: antechamber (‘a room leading into another room’); antediluvian (‘before Noah's flood’; ‘ridiculously outdated’); antenatal (‘before birth’). The much more common prefix anti- means ‘in the opposite direction’ or ‘against’ and can be, and is, attached to any number of words: anticlockwise; antidepressant; anti-fox-hunting