Definitions

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

  • noun One who is employed to escort people to their seats, as in a theater, church, or stadium.
  • noun A man who attends a bridal party at a wedding.
  • noun One who serves as official doorkeeper, as in a courtroom or legislative chamber.
  • noun An official whose duty is to make introductions between unacquainted persons or to precede persons of rank in a procession.
  • noun Archaic An assistant teacher in a school.
  • intransitive verb To serve as an usher to; escort.
  • intransitive verb To lead or conduct: synonym: guide.
  • intransitive verb To precede and introduce; inaugurate.
  • intransitive verb To serve as an usher.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To act as an usher to; attend on in the manner of an usher; introduce as forerunner or harbinger; forerun; precede; announce: generally followed by in, forth, etc.
  • noun An officer or servant who has the care of the door of a court, hall, chamber, or the like; a doorkeeper; hence, one who meets people at the door of a public hall, church, or theater, and escorts them to seats; also, an officer whose business it is to introduce strangers or to walk before a person of rank.
  • noun An under-teacher, or assistant to a school-master or principal teacher.
  • noun One of certain British geometrid moths. Hybernia leucophearia is the spring usher.

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

  • noun An officer or servant who has the care of the door of a court, hall, chamber, or the like; hence, an officer whose business it is to introduce strangers, or to walk before a person of rank. Also, one who escorts persons to seats in a church, theater, etc.
  • noun An under teacher, or assistant master, in a school.
  • transitive verb To introduce or escort, as an usher, forerunner, or harbinger; to forerun; -- sometimes followed by in or forth.

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

  • noun A person, in a church, cinema etc., who escorts people to their seats.
  • noun A male escort at a wedding.
  • noun A doorkeeper in a courtroom.
  • verb To guide people to their seats.
  • verb To accompany or escort (someone).
  • verb figuratively To precede; to act as a forerunner or herald.
  • verb figuratively, transitive to lead or guide somewhere

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

  • verb take (someone) to their seats, as in theaters or auditoriums
  • noun an official stationed at the entrance of a courtroom or legislative chamber
  • noun Irish prelate who deduced from the Bible that Creation occurred in the year 4004 BC (1581-1656)
  • noun someone employed to conduct others

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, doorkeeper, from Anglo-Norman usser, from Vulgar Latin *ūstiārius, from Latin ōstiārius, from ōstium, door; see ōs- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French (h)uissier, from Vulgar Latin *ustiārius ("doorkeeper"), from Latin ōstiārius, from ostium ("door"). Akin to ōs ("mouth").

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Examples

  • Rich Rachman, the main usher at the beach, says he wouldn't trade his job for any in the Padre organization.

    No. 10: Sun, sand, fun and baseball in San Diego 2008

  • Kids sneaking into and R-rated film and having to be kicked out after a few minutes by n usher is one thing, but when the parents are taking them is another.

    R-Rated Movies: How Young Is Too Young? « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • As I've stated before, the best usher is one you never see if you don't need to see him (or her).

    Nothing Shaking 2004

  • August 14th, 2004 at 10: 54 pm yeah but you proberbly loved mj before all the mess .. mj being a perv doesnt automatically make usher the most talented of the two. how long was mj on the top of the lists??? if usher is going to beat that then you can talk about him being the new king. hes succesfull yes but he does not stand out. for people who aren´t into rnb it sounds the same. it could be any thanks to the generic sound of rnb. im no fan of either but i bet you. mjs music will be rembered a long time after ushers star faded. child molester or not

    Usher for King! 2004

  • "Just a moment sir" called the usher, and then a small boy walked in accompanied by his enormous grandmother.

    Déja Lu Bystander 2009

  • "Just a moment sir" called the usher, and then a small boy walked in accompanied by his enormous grandmother.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Bystander 2009

  • Mark Pagel: We are learning to make phenotypes: "If these developments are not life changing enough, they will, in the longer-term usher in a new era in which our minds, the thing that we think of as" us ", can become separated from our body, or nearly separated anyway.

    Sentient Developments 2009

  • The traditional role of the usher is a formalization of this function, giving to men whose sign of office is a white boutonnire the right and obligation to keep partners “circulating.”

    Behavior in Public Places ERVING GOFFMAN 1963

  • Now the statement of the usher was a very reasonable one; but, strange to say, none of the colored people chose to remain except Sophy.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue Various

  • He hesitated and grew pale with anger, called the usher and gave him his card, with a few peremptory words, and slowly sat down.

    The Souls of Black Folk 1915

Comments

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  • I am think of this word as a verb, in the sense of "to guide, show someone to something" and, figuratively, "to introduce": to usher in...

    May 5, 2007

  • I like this word because it contains four consecutive personal pronouns (us, she, he, her)!

    February 3, 2008

  • "We usher in the AI future on the wings of angels, because the heavy lifting of the imagination isn’t possible without their pinion feathers – whether we think of them as artificial or divine."

    Source: The most avid believers in artificial intelligence are aggressively secular – yet their language is eerily religious. Why?

    January 22, 2018