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.
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HARBINDER - a harbinger past that binds future thinking
(see below)

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 a professor (1902-1994)