Messiah

How to spell messiah

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce messiah

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does messiah mean?

1. nounA person regarded as a saviour or liberator of a group, cause, or organisation.

Messiah in a sentence

• The desperate fans treated the new manager like a messiah who would rescue the club.

• Investors hailed the young founder as a messiah for the failing company.

Where does messiah come from?

Language of origin: Hebrew

The word comes from the Hebrew mashiach, which literally means 'the anointed one', built on the verb mashach, 'to anoint', because Israelite kings and priests were consecrated by having oil poured over them. In Jewish tradition the term named the promised deliverer expected to restore Israel. When the Hebrew scriptures were rendered into Greek the title was transliterated as Messias, and the same idea was translated more directly as Christos, 'the anointed', which is why Christ and Messiah are effectively the same title in two languages. English picked up Messiah through Latin and the early English Bibles, and the spelling preserves that older shape: the unexpected double 's' in the middle and the silent-looking '-iah' ending are exactly the traps that trip writers, both inherited from the Hebrew and Greek forms rather than from English phonics.

How the word is built

• from Hebrew mashiach (anointed one); mashach (to anoint)
• -iah agentive ending