Other forms: ushered, ushering, ushers
An usher is the person who shows you where to sit. A torch pointed down the dark aisle of a cinema; a man with a buttonhole at the church door, asking whether you are with the bride or the groom.
You meet it most as a verb: ushered into an office, ushered out through a side door, ushered away from a window by someone who would rather you did not look. Usher in is the fixed phrase — an invention that ushers in a decade of cheap travel, a law that ushers in change. In an English court the usher is the official who calls the witnesses and keeps order. At a wedding the ushers are the groom's friends, handing out the orders of service and steering people towards a pew.
1nounusherA person who shows people to their seats at a cinema, theatre, church or wedding.
“An usher led them down to the third row.”
2verbguideTo guide or escort someone somewhere.
“The nurse ushered them into a small side room.”
3verbbeginningTo be the beginning of something new.
“The vote ushered in a decade of argument.”
usher is an attendant.
An usher was a doorkeeper. Latin ōstium meant door and an ōstiārius stood at it; that became Vulgar Latin ustiārius, then Old French uissier, a porter or doorman, and Anglo-Norman usser, which English took in as ussher. French kept its own version of the word, huissier.
Latin
ōstiārius
Vulgar Latin
*ustiārius — doorkeeper
Old French
ussier
Anglo-Norman
usser
Middle English
ussher
English, today
usher
Built from
From Middle English ussher, uscher, usscher, from Anglo-Norman usser and Old French ussier, uissier (“porter, doorman”) (compare French huissier), from Vulgar Latin ustiārius (“doorkeeper”), from Latin ōstiārius, from ōstium (“door”). Akin to ōs (“mouth”). Probably a a doublet of ostiary and huissier.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
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