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Jul 28, 2014
This week's themeWords that have changed with time This week's words harbinger obsequious restive garble pabulum Add your 2 cents to our discussion on language and words. Or, if you wish, use paise, pence, yen, pesos, piasters, etc. Log on at our discussion forum Wordsmith Talk 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargThe linguist Ferdinand de Saussure once said, "Time changes all things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law." A living language, just like humans, adapts with time. All words change, some more than others. In the beginning, to broadcast was to sow seeds by scattering, a diaper was a kind of fabric, and a matrix was a womb. This week we'll see a few more words that ain't what they used to be. harbinger
PRONUNCIATION:
(HAHR-bin-juhr)
MEANING:
noun: One that foreshadows the approach of something. verb tr.: To signal the arrival of something. ETYMOLOGY:
Originally, a harbinger was a host, a person who provided lodging. With
time the sense changed to a person sent in advance to find lodging for an
army. From Old French herbergier (to provide lodging for), from herberge
(lodging). Ultimately from the Indo-European root koro- (war, host, army)
which also gave us harbor, herald, harness, hurry, harangue, and harry.
Earliest documented use: 1175.
USAGE:
"It is hard to elude the suspicion that it is a harbinger of further
things to come." Colby Cosh; Trigger Warnings are Easy to Ridicule; Maclean's (Toronto, Canada); Jun 2, 2014. See more usage examples of harbinger in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. -Karl Popper, philosopher and professor (1902-1994)
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