avant-garde

Old French avant-garde combined avant (before, in front) with garde (guard). The avant-garde was the detachment of soldiers who marched ahead of the main army, scouting territory and encountering the enemy first. English shortened it to vaward, then vanguard, by the fifteenth century. The military meaning was literal: the front guard, the soldiers who go first, the ones who face danger before anyone else.

The figurative meaning appeared in the sixteenth century. Francis Bacon wrote of the 'vanguard of learning' in the 1620s. Any group that leads the way into new territory — intellectual, political, artistic — could be called a vanguard. The metaphor was natural: just as the military vanguard encounters the unknown ahead of the main force, an intellectual vanguard encounters new ideas before the general public.

French reclaimed the full form for art. In the nineteenth century, avant-garde became the term for artistic movements that broke from tradition. Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism — each was avant-garde when it appeared. The word split: vanguard remained the English military and general term, while avant-garde became the international term for experimental art. Same word, same meaning, different registers.

The investment company Vanguard Group, founded in 1975 by John Bogle, chose the name from a list suggested by the Nelson naval victory. Bogle's index funds were, in a sense, avant-garde — a new idea in investing that most professionals initially mocked. The military metaphor and the artistic metaphor converged in a mutual fund. The front guard moved from the battlefield to the stock market.