vanguard

American  

[van-gahrd] / ˈvænˌgɑrd /

noun

• vanguards
  plural

1. the foremost division or the front part of an army; advance guard; van.

2. the forefront in any movement, field, activity, or the like.

3. the leaders of any intellectual or political movement.

4. (initial capital letter) a U.S. three-stage, satellite-launching rocket, the first two stages powered by liquid-propellant engines and the third by a solid-propellant engine.

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vanguard British  

/ ˈvænˌɡɑːd /

noun

1. the leading division or units of a military force

2. the leading position in any movement or field, or the people who occupy such a position

   the vanguard of modern literature

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• vanguards
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of vanguard

First recorded in 1480–90; earlier van(d)gard(e), from Middle French avangarde, variant of avant-garde; see avaunt, guard

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Explanation

If you are in the vanguard, you're up front. It could be that you are in the vanguard of an advancing army, or in the vanguard of any movement, trend, or occupation. Vanguard is an old variation of the French word avant-garde meaning "fore-guard" or "front guard." Vanguard and avant-garde have the same basic meaning, but avant-garde generally describes artistic endeavors, while vanguard can be more widely applied. You might talk about the vanguard of fashion on the red carpet, the vanguard of medical research at a university, or the vanguard of a political movement at a demonstration.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

vanguard vanguards

This type of fraud was costing taxpayers billions of pounds a year and experts like Stone were at the vanguard of the fightback.

From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026

The survey identified a subset of respondents that it calls the vanguard, defined as CIOs who are delivering better performance on business outcomes while also reporting high CEO-perceived AI value.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

In the years before smartphones and ubiquitous GPS, Mapquest.com was the vanguard of online wayfinding.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026

Sumner was a radical Republican on the vanguard of the anti-slavery movement, and as an abolitionist, he was fighting to rewrite the Constitution using Frederick Douglass’ language.

From Slate ● Aug. 10, 2026

Their host’s father had been a member of the cotton vanguard and a savvy proselytizer of the miracle crop.

From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead

And it found him in the person of Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of those quixotic, improbable adventurers who, over the past two centuries, have served as the vanguards of new forms of empire.

From Salon ● Oct. 22, 2023

For months, Google has preached a more cautious approach to artificial intelligence, even as rivals and the public embraced ChatGPT and other new technologies as vanguards of the future.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2023

Mr. Inamori was often placed alongside Sony’s Akio Morita and vehicle-maker Soichiro Honda as the vanguards of Japan’s industrial rebound after World War II to become one of the world’s top economies.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 3, 2022

From the beginning it was called "the experiment" and the children were referred to as "vanguards", says Mr Jensen.

From BBC ● Mar. 9, 2022

Our present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future human expeditions to the planets.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

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