Other forms: pioneers
A pioneer is the first to open up a new place or a new field. A pioneer of the field, the early pioneers, pioneer a technique.
The American sense of a settler moving west is the one most people picture, and it deliberately looks past who was already there. In science and medicine a pioneer is whoever did the thing first, and the word works as a verb too.
1nounpioneerThe first to open up a new place or a new field.
“She was a pioneer of heart surgery, performing operations no one had tried before.”
pioneer is a person.
Old French peonier meant a foot soldier sent ahead to clear the way, from peon, from Latin pes, a foot.
Middle French
pionnier
English, today
pioneer
Built from
From Middle French pionnier. From Middle French pionnier (“originally, a foot soldier”), Old French peonier, from peon (“a foot soldier”) (modern French: pion). See pawn (in chess).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA