In my part of the world the snow is melting. Melting too early and too fast for my taste since I haven’t had enough skiing this year.

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But the warm breezes and sunshine seem to make most people happy and they see these signs as harbingers of spring.

I see in one dictionary that there is actually a plant called the harbinger of spring.

The American Heritage Dictionary says that a harbinger is something “that indicates or foreshadows what is to come” it’s “a forerunner.”

The etymology of the word harbinger is tied up in that “forerunner” meaning.

Long before English was English the roots of this word were likely Germanic.

It was a military word.

Think not in terms not of attacking, but of moving troops from place to place and stationing them here or there.

When an army rolls into town it’s unlikely they can fit in comfortably when they arrive unannounced. Before you know it all the spare beds are full and all the food for miles around is being gobbled up.

Things tend to work out better if they have a place to stay arranged in advance.

To this extent the word harbinger is related to the word harbour which is a safe place to stay for a ship.

The harbinger was the person sent out ahead of the army, or some visiting royal personage, to let the townsfolk know that they were about to have a visit and to make sure the place was ready when the troops arrived.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that the parent word was heriberga in Old High German and that this word breaks down as heri meaning “army” and berga meaning “shelter.”

When the word harbinger arose in English more than 800 years ago it had already passed through French and was applied to the people who gave shelter.

From being someone who goes ahead to arrange for shelter, the harbinger evolved to be slightly more generally someone who went ahead just to announce that the king or some military group was on its way.

From there its easy to see how the melting of snow can be seen as advance notice of the coming of spring and so be called a harbinger.