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Definition
the leading position in any movement or fieldMore rarely, vanguard is used in a military context to specifically refer to units moving at the head of an army.
- Our company is at the vanguard of the green movement.
- They dashed against the rows of stakes, covering them with slick blood and limp corpses as the ranks at the vanguard were crushed against the posts.Christopher Paolini -- Eragon
- Ere long the vanguard swirled round the spur's end and came rushing into Dale.J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Hobbit
- I can make out the gray and balding head of my younger son in the vanguard.Dan Simmons -- Hyperion
- A vanguard of six-armed Earthborn threw a volley of stones that shattered the bone-and-jewel floor like ice.Rick Riordan -- The House of Hades
- The French contingent poured out of them only to find that again the Americans had beaten them and formed the vanguard of the parade.Milan Kundera -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- The vanguard spread out behind them, a slow-moving forest of lances and banners and spears.George R.R. Martin -- A Game of Thrones
- The first of these traded blows with the leaders of our vanguard, and two men fell.Roger Zelazny -- Nine Princes in Amber
- They were the elite, the vanguard of progress.Arthur C. Clarke -- Childhood's End
- For almost 200 years they constituted the vanguard of the Fon against European colonizers.Stieg Larsson -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
- Those in greatest jeopardy, the troops in Mifflin's vanguard, were still holding the outer defenses.David G. McCullough -- 1776
- In a moment the vanguard appeared around the bend.James Lincoln Collier -- My Brother Sam is Dead
- It was of this detachment, sent as a vanguard, that our friend d'Artagnan formed a part.Alexandre Dumas -- The Three Musketeers
- He himself had mentioned John Kwang as a part of that vanguard, though his implication was then cast only in terms of succession.Chang-rae Lee -- Native Speaker
- Writers, artists, and savants of America's progressive vanguard have, for years, passed through his living room, pollinating him and his two brothers.Ron Suskind -- A Hope in the Unseen
- They are in the vanguard of the fight for Peace and Progress.John Le Carre -- The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
- Harlon, Doc, Ira, and Franklin swept forward with the rest of Easy Company, in the vanguard of the attack.James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers
- The ladies, with Frau Stohr in the vanguard—though Mmes.Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain
- In the last red glow men in the vanguard saw a black speck, a horseman riding back towards them.J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Two Towers
- And about Whiz Go's vanguard status.Don DeLillo -- Underworld
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