Messages

How to spell messages

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce messages

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does messages mean?

1. nounPieces of written, spoken, or electronic communication sent from one person to another.
2. verbSends an electronic communication to someone, as the third-person singular form of the verb.

Messages in a sentence

• noun

  She returned to find a stack of voicemail messages waiting on her phone.

• verb

  He always messages his manager before changing the schedule.

• noun

  The team exchanged dozens of messages before agreeing on a final plan.

• verb

  Whenever she lands safely, she messages her family straight away.

Where does messages come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb mittere, meaning 'to send', whose past participle was missus. From that came the Medieval Latin missaticum, a noun meaning 'something sent', which passed into Old French as message. English took the word up in the 1200s for a communication sent from one person to another, and the meaning has stayed remarkably stable ever since. The same mittere root sits inside a whole family of English words, including 'mission', 'missile', 'transmit', and 'dismiss', all of which carry the idea of sending. The plural simply adds -s to the singular message, but the spelling trap is the soft -age ending and the doubled s in the middle, which echo the Latin missus rather than the single-s spelling people sometimes expect.

How the word is built

• mess- (from Latin missus, sent)
• -age (noun-forming suffix)
• -s (plural/third-person ending)