Transcript for the Piece Audio version of pioneer - word of the day

This is the etymology moment, and I'm Charles Hodgson. Today we'll hear the story behind the word pioneer.
I took a look at Urbandictionary.com and as well as noting that pioneer is a brand of electronics, there is a definition there that carries what I think is an accurate sense of the meaning of pioneer missing from a number of mainstream dictionaries. I quote:
Anything that is from an earlier era and looked upon with high regard or respect. Can be used to refer to music, clothing, language, or anything really. UNQUOTE
And just to back that up, The New Oxford American Dictionary gives as an example QUOTE "a famous pioneer of birth control." So we have a sense of healthy respect for those pioneers who have gone before us and who've done the hard work that makes it easier for us today. Americans are proud of their pioneering spirit and think not only of modern breakthroughs in medicine or technology, but of covered wagons toughing it out in the days before pizza delivery. But the origins of the word pioneer are not so proud; not so lofty. The word pioneer came into English from French at the beginning of the 1500s with a meaning of "a lowly laborer who digs ditches." Mixed in with this meaning and paralleling it was a meaning of a foot soldier who goes ahead to prepare the way for the coming army, presumably work that involved digging ditches. It turns out that the word pioneer is related to the word pawn, that most lowly chess piece, or as defined in the OED "A person or thing of little value, status, power, etc." The reason pioneers and pawns were people of lowly status is because they were unhorsed and destined to walk. At the root of these words is the Indo-European word for foot, ped. Thus the progress of the word was that the underclass walked into battle and got the crappy assignments, which included going out first into potentially enemy territory. This meaning of going out first hung on when the meaning of pioneer changed right at the time of Shakespeare to include those breaking new ground in honorable professions that could be looked back on with pride.