An outer or front chamber; an anteroom or entrance room before the main chamber.
From 'fore-' (before/in front) and 'chamber' (a room). Used in architecture and formal buildings to describe spaces that precede more important rooms, with roots in Middle English and Old French.
Historical forechambers were literally power geography—they determined who got to see important people, with visitors waiting in the forechamber while the powerful decided whether to grant audience in the inner chamber.
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