Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who carries or proclaims important news; a messenger.
  • noun One that gives a sign or indication of something to come; a harbinger.
  • noun An official whose specialty is heraldry.
  • noun An official formerly charged with making royal proclamations and bearing messages of state between sovereigns.
  • noun An official who formerly made proclamations and conveyed challenges at a tournament.
  • transitive verb To proclaim, especially with enthusiasm; announce or acclaim.
  • transitive verb To be a sign of; foreshadow.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun In extended modern use, any official messenger, especially one charged with a message of defiance, a proposition of peace, or the like.
  • noun A proclaimer; a publisher; a crier; an announcer of important tidings.
  • noun A forerunner; a precursor; a harbinger: sometimes used poetically in apposition or attributively.
  • noun The red-breasted merganser, Mergus serrator, more fully called herald-duck. See earl-duck, harle.
  • noun A noctuid moth, Gonoptera libatrix: an English collectors’ name. See Gonoptera.
  • To proclaim; give tidings of as a herald; announce.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To introduce, or give tidings of, as by a herald; to proclaim; to announce; to foretell; to usher in.
  • noun (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.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A proclaimer; one who, or that which, publishes or announces.
  • noun A forerunner; a a precursor; a harbinger.
  • noun Any messenger.
  • noun in England, an ancient corporation, dependent upon the crown, instituted or perhaps recognized by Richard III. in 1483, consisting of the three Kings-at-Arms and the Chester, Lancaster, Richmond, Somerset, Windsor, and York Heralds, together with the Earl Marshal. This retains from the Middle Ages the charge of the armorial bearings of persons privileged to bear them, as well as of genealogies and kindred subjects; -- called also College of Arms.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A messenger, especially one bringing important news.
  • noun A harbinger, giving signs of things to come.
  • noun heraldry An official whose specialty is heraldry, especially one between the ranks of pursuivant and king of arms.
  • noun entomology A moth (Scoliopteryx libatrix)
  • verb transitive To proclaim, announce, etc. an event.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb greet enthusiastically or joyfully
  • verb foreshadow or presage
  • verb praise vociferously
  • noun (formal) a person who announces important news
  • noun something that precedes and indicates the approach of something or someone

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, of Germanic origin; see koro- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman heraud, from Old French heraut, hiraut (French: héraut).

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Examples

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  • A knight's assistant and an expert advisor on heraldry.

    August 25, 2008