Messenger
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 One who brings messages.
- 2 a person who carries a message wordnet
- 3 The secretary bird.
- 4 The supporting member of an aerial cable (electric power or telephone or data).
- 5 A person appointed to perform certain ministerial duties under bankrupt and insolvent laws, such as to take charge of the estate of the bankrupt or insolvent.
"The Messenger under the joint Commission of Bankruptcy might have seized the Whole, if they had remained in their Warehouse"
Show 8 more definitions
- 6 An instant messenger program.
"The 4 primary messengers include ^([sic]) AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger."
- 7 A forerunner or harbinger. figuratively
"a messenger of doom"
- 8 A light scudding cloud preceding a storm.
- 9 A piece of paper, etc., blown up a string to a kite.
- 10 A light line with which a heavier line may be hauled e.g. from the deck of a ship to the pier.
- 11 A weight dropped down a line to close a Nansen bottle.
- 12 A messenger-at-arms. Scotland
- 13 A pin which travels across the pin deck to knock over another pin, usually for a strike.
- 1 To send something by messenger. transitive
"I'll messenger over the signed documents."
- 1 A surname originating as an occupation for a messenger.
- 2 A male given name of historical usage. rare
Example
More examples"Instead of going myself, I sent a messenger."
Etymology
From Middle English messengere, messingere, messangere, from Old French messanger, a variant of Old French messagier (French messager), equivalent to message + -er. Doublet of messager. Displaced native Old English boda (“messenger, envoy”) and ǣrendraca (“messenger, ambassador”). For the replacement of -ager with -enger, -inger, -anger, compare passenger, harbinger, scavenger, porringer. This development may have been merely the addition of n, or it may have resulted due to contamination from other suffixes such as Middle English -ing and the rare Old French -ange, -enc, -inge, -inghe (“-ing”) for Old French -age (“-age”).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.