Hi all,
Just saw his sentence in the recent TIME magazine article on corruption in Russia: "Shifrin refused to ante up, and the tax office eventually dropped its case". The context is a small business that sells take-out soup, and that was being harrassed by the tax officials for a payoff of $1000 on grounds of some alleged violation of retailing regulations.
I have heard "to ante up" in the context of bidding at a card game, or by analogy to "up the ante" or raise the stakes; I had not heard it used just for making any payment. Is the original Latin meaning of "ante" (before) not the reason why this verb or noun was used to mean a payment before (eg in cards, before you put your cards on the talbe) or in any case involves some sort of gamble? I suppose paying off the corrupt taxman would have been a gamble,in a sense, to get them to leave you alone, but I don't think that is what the writer had in mind.
Shorter OED says only "put up as an ante, bet, stake, pay up".
Thanks for any insights,
Monica
I agree that the origin is a payment that is made in advance, but it has been extended to payment at any time, especially as a share in some group activity.
I would have considered "pony up" more appropriate, but I can see the writer thinking of one expression and accidentally grabbing the other. I've seen cases before where the nuances between two similar phrases are lost in hasty speech or hasty writing.