harbinger

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The Word of the Day for March 15 is:

harbinger   \HAR-bin-jer\   noun
     1 : one that pioneers in or initiates a major change : 
precursor
    *2 : one that presages or foreshadows what is to come

Example sentence:
     "More often than not, robins are year-round residents... 
[L]et hummingbirds and orioles be your harbingers of spring." 
(Scott Shalaway, _Charleston Gazette_, January 30, 2005)

Did you know?
     When medieval travelers needed lodging for the night, they
went looking for a harbinger. As long ago as the 12th 
century, "harbinger" was used to mean "one who provides 
lodging" or "a host," but that meaning is now obsolete. By the 
late 1300s, "harbinger" was also being used for a person sent 
ahead of a main party to seek lodgings, often for royalty or a 
campaigning army, but that old sense has largely been left in 
the past too. Both of those historical senses are true to the 
Anglo-French parent of "harbinger," the word "herberge," which 
meant "lodgings." The most common sense of the word nowadays, 
the "forerunner" sense, was actually something of a Johnny-come-
lately in English; its earliest documented use doesn't appear 
until the mid-1500s.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.