PIONEERS Synonyms: 72 Similar and Opposite Words

pioneers 1 of 2

noun

plural of pioneer

as in settlers

a person who settles in a new region the hardships that the pioneers endured while taming the wilderness

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pioneers

2 of 2

verb

present tense third-person singular of pioneer

as in founds

to be responsible for the creation and early operation or use of he single-handedly pioneered the university's institute for medical research

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of pioneers

Noun

The festival also gave a nod to some of the industry’s women pioneers, such as Bikini Kill and Garbage. — Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2026 Translated, Huang’s immense fortune will eventually pale by comparison to those that will follow from entrepreneurs building on his and other AI pioneers’ broad shoulders. — John Tamny, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2026 Its location was chosen in 1847 by then-church president Brigham Young just days after Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. — Brandon Griggs, CNN Money, 28 Aug. 2026 The boys started out as New York punk brats, then became old-school hip-hop pioneers in the early Def Jam era with their massively influential Licensed to Ill, teaming up with young producer Rick Rubin. — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 28 Aug. 2026 The early quantum pioneers didn’t realize — at first — that the arcane math that strikingly captured the conduct of atoms had left the real world behind. — Quanta Magazine, 26 Aug. 2026 Digital dyeing is transforming how fashion gets its color, and one of the technology’s pioneers is now undergoing a transformation of its own. — Angela Velasquez, Footwear News, 21 Aug. 2026 These platforms could simultaneously help the AI pioneers and power users in the operating forces learn and evolve more quickly. — Emelia S. Probasco, Foreign Affairs, 20 Aug. 2026 Venture just beyond downtown to Mount Moriah Cemetery, where Calamity Jane lies buried next to Wild Bill Hickok; paths through the pines lead to the graves of pioneers and other Wild West figures, like Seth Bullock. — Jacqueline Kehoe, Midwest Living, 19 Aug. 2026

Verb

This year’s Veteran Era Category, which honors artists that came to musical prominence before 1980, was awarded to bluegrass and folk music pioneers The Stanley Brothers, Ralph and Carter Stanley. — Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 20 Mar. 2026 Geese owes an attitudinal debt to the punk pioneers the Stooges. — Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 12 Dec. 2025 HackQuest pioneers this approach by creating comprehensive developer profiles on the blockchain. — Douglas B. Laney, Forbes.com, 30 Aug. 2025 DiLoCoX pioneers a number of novel techniques, including pipeline parallelism, adaptive gradient compression, one-step-delay communication overlaps and local training, to create a decentralized AI training environment that scales to unprecedented heights. — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 22 Aug. 2025

Recent Examples of Synonyms for pioneers

Noun

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities, a figure that includes those killed by Israeli settlers, while dozens of Israelis have also been killed.

— Rena Rowe, The Washington Examiner, 5 Sep. 2026
The ambassador last month spoke out sharply after weeks of unrest in the town of Qusra, where settlers surrounded several homes including one owned by a Palestinian American.

— ABC News, ABC News, 5 Sep. 2026

Definition of settlers

Noun

In his telling, the Lenape agreed to sell Dutch colonists only as much land on Manhattan as could be covered by a man’s breeches.

— Eric Lach, New Yorker, 26 Aug. 2026
What happened to the colonists remains unknown, but archaeological finds—including otherwise anachronistic English artifacts on Hatteras Island—give some support to White’s theory that at least some of the colonists relocated willingly.

— Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Aug. 2026

Definition of colonists

Verb

Sometimes, the administration institutes a cap on GPU export numbers to firms like Alibaba.

— John Werner, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2026
Imagine, for example, a bot tasked with reducing the federal deficit that institutes an elaborate and hard-to-detect accounting gimmick, or a customer-service agent that issues absurd discounts in pursuit of customer-satisfaction ratings.

— Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 22 July 2026

Definition of institutes

Verb

And organizations need to build an operational model that establishes clear lanes for AI to drive work and guardrails to prevent it from going off course.

— Jason Kurtz, Forbes.com, 4 Sep. 2026
Strong performance from a single router establishes one part of the picture, while the network tests show how the system performs when additional routing stages are involved.

— Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 3 Sep. 2026

Definition of establishes

Verb

Once Paul Baker and Issa break the news to the rest of the friend group, the show introduces the governing complication that runs through the rest of the season.

— Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 2 Sep. 2026
Any impact — no matter how small — to Meta's core ad business just introduces another level of uncertainty in a stock already on the ropes.

— Paulina Likos, CNBC, 1 Sep. 2026

Definition of introduces

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“Pioneers.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pioneers. Accessed 6 Sep. 2026.

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Synonyms of pioneers

noun

verb

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