Word of the Day:
rearguard
What It Means
The rearmost part of a force, especially a detachment of troops that protect the rear of a retreating force.
The defence, collectively the defenders.
Rearguard in Context
“Mancini's side only showed enough ambition when it was too late and by then battle lines were drawn as James Collins and former City captain Richard Dunne fought a magnificent rearguard action at the heart of Villa's defence.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English rier garde, from Anglo-Norman reregard, reregarde, rereguarde and Middle French rieregarde, from Old French rereguarde (attested in The Song of Roland, c. 1150), from rere (“after; behind”) + guarde (“guard”). By surface analysis, rear + guard. Piecewise doublet of retrogarde.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rearguard (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “rearguard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rearguard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.