vanguard

Earlier forms included vandgard and (a)vantgard, derived from Old French avan(t)garde (“before guard”). Doublet of avant-garde and vaward. Etymologically unrelated to van.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈvænˌɡɑɹd/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈvanˌɡɑːd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈvɛnˌɡɐːd/
• Rhymes: -ænɡɑː(ɹ)d

vanguard (plural vanguards)

1. (military) The leading units at the front of an army or fleet.

   Synonyms: advance guard, (obsolete) avant-garde

   Antonym: rearguard

   • 1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC, page 35:

     They ſay, that the King diuided his Armie into three Battailes; whereof the Vant-guard onely well ſtrengthened with wings, came to fight.

2. (by extension) The person(s) at the forefront of any group or movement.

   Synonym: avant-garde

   • 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 4, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:

     By some paradoxical evolution rancour and intolerance have been established in the vanguard of primitive Christianity. Mrs. Spoker, in common with many of the stricter disciples of righteousness, was as inclement in demeanour as she was cadaverous in aspect.

   • 2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, page 9]”, in The New York Times‎:

     [O]ne minute this "Jihadi John" was struggling to get by, and get accepted, in drizzly England, unemployed with a mortgage to pay and a chip on his shoulder, and the next he stands in brilliant Levantine sunlight, where everything is clear and etched, at the vanguard of some Sunni Risorgimento intent on subjecting the world to its murderous brand of Wahhabi Islam.