heraldry n.

"messenger, envoy," late 13c. (in Anglo-Latin); c. 1200 as a surname, from Anglo-French heraud, Old French heraut, hiraut (12c.), from Frankish *hariwald "commander of an army" or a similar Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *harja "army" (from PIE root *koro- "war;" see harry) + *waldaz "to command, rule" (see wield). The form fits, but the sense evolution is difficult to explain, unless it is in reference to the chief officer of a tournament, who introduced knights and made decisions on rules (which was one of the early senses, often as heraud of armes, though not the earliest in English).

late 14c., poetrie, "poetry, composition in verse; a poem; ancient literature; poetical works, fables, or tales," from Old French poetrie (13c.), and perhaps directly from Medieval Latin poetria (c. 650), from Latin poeta (see poet). In classical Latin, poetria meant "poetess."

Figurative use is from 1660s. Old English had metergeweorc "verse," metercræft "art of versification." Also scop-cræft "the poet's art." Modern English lacks a true verb form in this group of words, though poeticize (1804), poetize (1580s, from French poétiser), and poetrize (c. 1600) have been tried. Poetry in motion (1826) perhaps is from poetry of motion (1813) "dance" (also poetry of the foot, 1660s). Poetry slam is by 1993.

It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought. A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured. [Thoreau, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"]

Poetry — meaning the aggregate of instances from which the idea of poetry is deduced by every new poet — has been increasingly enlarged for many centuries. The instances are numerous, varied and contradictory as instances of love; but just as 'love' is a word of powerful enough magic to make the true lover forget all its baser and falser, usages, so is 'poetry' for the true poet. [Robert Graves, "The White Goddess"]

And the relation of the forms of poetry to the requirements of actual song is so fixed, that the laws of the four great groups of metre which we now successively to examine—the trimetre, tetrametre, pentametre, and hexametre—all depend upon the physical power of utterance in the breath. [Ruskin, "Elements of English Prosody, for use in St. George's Schools," 1880]

"manners, acts, or character of a pedant; the overrating of mere knowledge, especially in matters of learning which are of minor importance; ostentatious or inappropriate display of learning," 1610s, from Italian pedanteria, from pedante, or from French pédanterie, from pédant (see pedant).

PEDANTRY crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it. [The Rev. C.C. Colton, "Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words," London, 1823]