5 March 2013

harbinger

[hahr-bin-jer]

noun

1. a person who goes ahead and makes known the approach of another; herald.
2. anything that foreshadows a future event; omen; sign: Frost is a harbinger of winter.
3. a person sent in advance of troops, a royal train, etc., to provide or secure lodgings and other accommodations.
verb (used with object)
4. to act as harbinger to; herald the coming of.
Origin:
1125–75; late Middle English herbenger, nasalized variant of Middle English herbegere, dissimilated variant of Old French herberg ( i ) ere host, equivalent to herberg ( ier ) to shelter (< Germanic; see harbor) + -iere -er2

Synonyms
2. herald, forerunner, precursor, portent, indication.

Today’s aphorism

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

– William Knowlton Zinsser

On this day

5 March 1946 – The term ‘Iron Curtain’ to describe the Soviet Union and Communist Europe, is coined in a speech by Winston Churchill.

5 March 1953 – USSR leader Joseph Stalin died at his dacha at Kuntseva,15km west of Moscow, following a stroke three days earlier. An autopsy suggested he may have died from ingesting warfarin, a rat poison which thins the blood, and that this may have caused the cerebral hemorrhage. The warfarin may have been added to his food by Deputy Premier Beria and Nikita Khrushchev. It was later revealed by former Politburo member, Vyacheslav Molotov in his 1993 memoirs that Beria had boasted of poisoning Stalin.