Messenger

How to spell messenger

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce messenger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does messenger mean?

1. nounA person who carries a message, package, or piece of news from one party to another.

Messenger in a sentence

• The courier firm sent a messenger on a bike to collect the signed contract.

• The king's messenger arrived at dawn with news from the battlefield.

Where does messenger come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travels back to the Latin verb mittere, meaning 'to send', whose past participle missus gave rise to a host of English words about sending, including 'mission', 'missile', and 'message' itself. From missus the medieval Latin missaticum developed, meaning 'something sent', which became message in Old French, and a messagier was the person who carried it. English borrowed messager in the 1200s, and over time speakers slipped an extra n into the middle, turning it into messenger. That intrusive n is purely a quirk of pronunciation, the same one that crept into 'passenger' (from passager) and 'harbinger', and it is precisely the letter that trips writers up, since the root word message has no n at all. So the spelling trap is real: remember message, then add the surprise n before the -ger.

How the word is built

• mess- (from message, ultimately Latin mittere 'to send')
• -enger (agent suffix, with an intrusive n)