Skip to content
OneKitly

pioneer

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌpaɪ.əˈnɪə(ɹ)//
  • United States//ˌpaɪ.əˈnɪɹ//
  • Canada//ˌpaɪ.əˈniɹ//

One who goes before, as into the wilderness, preparing the way for others to follow.

noun

  1. 1

    One who goes before, as into the wilderness, preparing the way for others to follow.

  2. 2

    A person or other entity who is first or among the earliest in any field of inquiry, enterprise, or progress.

    Some people will consider their national heroes to be pioneers of civilization.

    Certain politicians can be considered as pioneers of reform.

    As towns continue to grow, replanting vegetation has become a form of urban utopia and green roofs are spreading fast. Last year 1m square metres of plant-covered roofing was built in France, as much as in the US, and 10 times more than in Germany, the pioneer in this field.

  3. 3

    A soldier detailed or employed to form roads, dig trenches, and make bridges, as an army advances; a sapper.

    [King of] Fess. What thinks your greatnes beſt to be atchieu’d In purſuit of the Cities ouerthrow? Bai[azeth]. I wil the captiue Pioners of Argier, Cut off the water, that by leaden pipes Runs to the citie from the mountain Carnon, […]

  4. 4

    A member of any of several European organizations advocating abstinence from alcohol.

  5. 5

    A member of a children’s organization operated by the Communist Party, typically in the second of three stages toward becoming a member of the Party itself.

  6. 6

    Variant of PioneerAlternative letter-case form of Pioneer (“A Singaporean born on or before 31 December 1949, who is entitled to various healthcare and social support schemes.”).

    Perhaps the pioneer generation, having experienced unity in solidarity, will show the rest of Singapore the way.

    A fenceless open-air museum […] that captures the spirit and struggles of Singapore's pioneer generation.

Etymology

From Middle French pionnier (“originally, a foot soldier”), Old French peonier, from peon (“a foot soldier”) (modern French: pion). See pawn (in chess).

verb

  1. 1

    To be the first to do or achieve (something), preparing the way for others to follow.

    The young doctor pioneered a new life-saving surgical technique.

Forms

plural
pioneers
past tense
pioneered
past participle
pioneered
present participle
pioneering
third person singular
pioneers
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).