Grammar Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty and this week I have a tidbit about the word

harbinger and a meaty middle about pig Latin.

Let's start with the tidbit.

In last week's podcast, we talked about how Captain RF Scots sick ponies might have been

a harbinger of the disastrous ending to their expedition.

And I started thinking about the word harbinger.

If the top of my head I couldn't place the root or put it into a group of related words.

Well, it turns out that harbinger comes from old French and old German words that meant

to provide shelter or lodging and later had a sense of being someone who sent a head

to arrange accommodations.

And in that sense it's related to the word harbour as in to shelter.

Now it's starting to make sense.

There was actually a royal position, an officer in the royal household called the night harbinger,

whose job was to provide for the accommodation of the king and royal family when the court

moved in progress.

And there were also gentlemen harbingers who did the same for the great officers and

the yeoman harbingers who took care of the rest of the retinue.

While I was reading about the night harbinger, I went down an interesting research rabbit

hole and discovered that the office of the harbinger was abolished.

In 1846, along with another transportation related office, master of the barges, who

get this, was also keeper of the swans.

Keeper of the swans.

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