Evangelical

How to spell evangelical

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce evangelical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does evangelical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a strand of Protestant Christianity that stresses personal conversion and the authority of the Gospels.
2. adjectiveShowing intense, almost missionary enthusiasm for a cause or product.

Evangelical in a sentence

• The family attended a large evangelical church on the edge of town.

• He became evangelical about cycling after selling his car.

• Her doctoral thesis examined evangelical movements of the nineteenth century.

• The manager was evangelical in her promotion of the new software.

Where does evangelical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek euangelion, which literally meant 'good news' or 'good message', built from eu 'good' and angelos 'messenger'. The same angelos is the source of the English word 'angel', so an evangelist is, in a sense, a bringer of good messages. Latin took the term over as evangelium for the Christian gospel, and the related adjective evangelicus passed through Late Latin and French into English in the 1500s. By that time it described teachings drawn directly from the Gospels, and during the religious revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it came to name a particular fervent strand of Protestant Christianity. The spelling keeps the hidden Greek root angel right in the middle, which is the easiest way to remember the single g and the -el- that adults often muddle.

How the word is built

• ev- (from Greek eu-, good)
• angel (messenger)
• -ical (adjective suffix)