herald

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A person who carries or proclaims important news; a messenger.
2. n. One that gives a sign or indication of something to come; a harbinger: The crocus is a herald of spring.
3. n. An official whose specialty is heraldry.
4. n. An official formerly charged with making royal proclamations and bearing messages of state between sovereigns.
5. n. An official who formerly made proclamations and conveyed challenges at a tournament.
6. v. To proclaim; announce: cheers that heralded the team's arrival.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An officer sent by a sovereign, a general, or other person of high authority to another, or to an army or public assembly, with a formal message or proclamation, or employed in related duties. The specific office of herald has existed from early historical times; but as still maintained, as in Great Britain, it is merely nominal or restricted to subsidiary functions. In the middle ages the herald was an important adjunct of armies and courts. His person was inviolable. His costume was emblazoned with the armorial bearings of his chief, and constituted an official dress which it was a high offense for another person to assume. As armorial bearings became a matter of careful record, the herald was especially charged with the proper depicting and blazoning of achievements, and with the supervision of the assumption of bearings by those who were entitled to them and their prohibition to others, and hence with the genealogy of noble families and the descent of titles. At times questions of precedence, and of the marshaling of ceremonial processions and the like, were referred to heralds. Compare pursuivant and king-at-arms. See Herald's College, below.
2. n. In extended modern use, any official messenger, especially one charged with a message of defiance, a proposition of peace, or the like.
3. n. A proclaimer; a publisher; a crier; an announcer of important tidings.
4. n. A forerunner; a precursor; a harbinger: sometimes used poetically in apposition or attributively.
5. n. The red-breasted merganser, Mergus serrator, more fully called herald-duck. See earl-duck, harle.
6. n. A noctuid moth, Gonoptera libatrix: an English collectors’ name. See Gonoptera.
7. To proclaim; give tidings of as a herald; announce.

Wiktionary

1. n. A messenger, especially one bringing important news.
2. n. A harbinger, giving signs of things to come.
3. n. heraldry An official whose speciality is heraldry, especially one between the ranks of pursuivant and king of arms.
4. n. entomology A moth (Scoliopteryx libatrix)
5. v. transitive To proclaim, announce, etc. an event.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Antiq.) An officer whose business was to denounce or proclaim war, to challenge to battle, to proclaim peace, and to bear messages from the commander of an army. He was invested with a sacred and inviolable character.
2. n. In the Middle Ages, the officer charged with the above duties, and also with the care of genealogies, of the rights and privileges of noble families, and especially of armorial bearings. In modern times, some vestiges of this office remain, especially in England. See Heralds' College (below), and King-at-Arms.
3. n. A proclaimer; one who, or that which, publishes or announces.
4. n. A forerunner; a a precursor; a harbinger.
5. n. Any messenger.
6. v. To introduce, or give tidings of, as by a herald; to proclaim; to announce; to foretell; to usher in.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. greet enthusiastically or joyfully
2. v. foreshadow or presage
3. v. praise vociferously
4. n. (formal) a person who announces important news
5. n. something that precedes and indicates the approach of something or someone