messenger

American  

[mes-uhn-jer] / ˈmɛs ən dʒər /

noun

• messengers
  plural

1. a person who carries a message or goes on an errand for another, especially as a matter of duty or business.

   Synonyms:

   courier, bearer

2. a person employed to convey official dispatches or to go on other official or special errands.

   a bank messenger.

3. Nautical.

   1. a rope or chain made into an endless belt to pull on an anchor cable or to drive machinery from some power source, as a capstan or winch.

   2. a light line by which a heavier line, as a hawser, can be pulled across a gap between a ship and a pier, a buoy, another ship, etc.

4. Oceanography. a brass weight sent down a line to actuate a Nansen bottle or other oceanographic instrument.

5. Archaic. a herald, forerunner, or harbinger.

---

verb (used with object)

1. to send by messenger.

messenger British  

/ ˈmɛsɪndʒə /

noun

1. a person who takes messages from one person or group to another or others

2. a person who runs errands or is employed to run errands

3. a carrier of official dispatches; courier

4. nautical

   1. a light line used to haul in a heavy rope

   2. an endless belt of chain, rope, or cable, used on a powered winch to take off power

5. archaic a herald

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• messengers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of messenger

1175–1225; Middle English messager, messangere < Anglo-French; Old French messagier. See message, -er ²

Explanation

Use the noun messenger to refer to someone who brings you a message. Your mail carrier delivering a postcard and your gossipy friend calling to give you the latest news can each be described as a messenger. Delivering messages for others is certainly a time-honored profession, since even the gods of Antiquity needed someone to do it — the Greeks had Hermes and the Romans had Mercury as their messenger gods. A messenger carries a message, and that's where the word itself comes from: the Latin root of message is missus, which means "a sending away, sending, dispatching" and is the past participle of mittere, "send."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

messenger messengers

Because working-class voters, as they tell us themselves, are not simply waiting to be activated by the right program, messenger or phrase.

From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2026

The vaccine, called mFlusiva, uses the same messenger RNA technology as Moderna’s Covid-19 shots.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026

His Telegram messenger is one of the country's main communications platforms.

From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026

Dopamine is a chemical messenger that helps control movement, coordination, and balance.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 28, 2026

He backed up into his messenger bag, then quickly knelt down and scooped it up.

From "Anger Is a Gift" by Mark Oshiro

This called for the creation of fake messengers, and Delmer invented some absolute stunners.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

Hormones act as chemical messengers that help regulate many processes throughout the body.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 9, 2026

Humans domesticated the birds and used them as messengers and as food for thousands of years.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

Company dancer Lloyd Knight, costumed as the Preacher in “Spring” and captured in a determined stance on a boulder, faces the book’s last page, which quotes Graham: “Dancers are the messengers of the gods.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026

Octavian immediately dispatched his messengers to the mausoleum, but they arrived too late.

From "Sterling Biographies®: Cleopatra: Egypt's Last and Greatest Queen" by Susan Blackaby

Related Words

• courier
• emissary
• go-between
• mediator
• prophet