avant-garde

Pluralavant-gardes

1. 1
   experimentaladjective

   Innovative and pioneering, especially in a way that is extreme or obvious.

   The company's avant-garde production of Hamlet had the cast performing in near darkness.

   Some of the architect's early designs were considered too avant-garde for the city council to approve.

   Similarunderground

   Oppositeconventional, traditional, conservative, mainstream

   Note

   It grades like any ordinary adjective: very avant-garde, more avant-garde, the most avant-garde. The hyphenated spelling is the usual one, but the open form appears too, both before a noun (avant garde ideas) and standing on its own. The word also reaches past the arts: Mark O'Connell, writing in 2025, found something close to avant garde in Beast Games, MrBeast's competition show.

2. 2
   art pioneersnouncountable

   A group of innovators who create or champion new methods and ideas, especially in the arts.

   Critics who once mocked the avant-garde now compete to buy its early canvases.

   A small avant-garde of chefs began serving meals built entirely from foraged plants.

   Similarvanguard

3. 3
   army frontnounobsolete

   The vanguard of an army or other force: the leading section that advances ahead of the main body.

   By dusk the avant-garde had crossed the ridge, a full day's march ahead of the baggage train.

   The fleet's avant-garde of six frigates sighted the enemy coast shortly after noon.

   Note

   An army word that English has since let go: in military writing today the leading troops are the vanguard, and avant-garde in this sense belongs to older writing. Avant-garde, vanguard and the old form vaward all come from one French word. Its counterpart was arrière-garde, the rear guard, and the picture of people marching out in front lives on in the artistic meaning.

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