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.

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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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• messengers
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of messenger

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

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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

But there seemed to be some frustration directed at the messenger.

From Slate ● Nov. 4, 2026

I feel like I might be the messenger.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 2, 2026

At the time, the real estate mogul was working as a messenger to make ends meet, and was making a delivery to the owner of an opulent Manhattan home.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 2, 2026

The process begins when a section of DNA is copied into messenger RNA, a molecule that carries genetic instructions to the cell's protein-producing machinery.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 2026

Then Zeus sent another messenger to her, a great personage, none other than his revered mother Rhea, the oldest of the gods.

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton

Their ability to move through dense material also makes neutrinos valuable messengers from otherwise inaccessible regions of the universe.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2026

The leaders of the A.I. industries are extremely unpopular and make bad messengers for requesting this sort of access.

From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2026

Neutrinos can be thought of as astronomical messengers that point to those fundamental events.

From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026

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

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

What if they’re all messengers, like me, and they’re all threatened and desperate just to get through what they have to do to survive?

From "I Am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak

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Related Words

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

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