Something avant-garde is new and unusual, and nothing is newer or more unusual than the first wave of a military battle. That's the logic that went into the formation of the phrase, anyway, because avant-garde literally means "advance guard"- something that is pushing the limit, just like the actual unit. Avant is a word meaning "in front" or "before" and, through Old French, it comes from the Latin word abante, with the same definition. This easily breaks into the prefix ab-, meaning "of", and the root ante, meaning "before". Garde, meanwhile, is the cognate and etymon of the English word guard, and it derives from the verb guarder, meaning "to protect". This in turn originated from the Frankish phrase wardon, "to protect", from Proto-Germanic wardana, "to guard", from PIE wer, "to cover". That's all, folks!
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy philosophy, trivia, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
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