angel

The English word angel begins in Greek with angelos, a common noun meaning "messenger." It is attested in classical Greek centuries before Christianity took shape. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, angelos was used for divine messengers. That translation fixed the word in a sacred setting that later readers inherited.

Latin took the word as angelus, and Christian writers used it steadily from late antiquity onward. Jerome's Vulgate, completed in the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE, helped spread the Latin form across western Europe. In that setting the meaning narrowed from any messenger to a heavenly being sent by God. A routine word was becoming a title of the unseen.

Old English borrowed the term as engel, probably through Latin and the church culture tied to it, by the early medieval period. The native language already had words for messengers, so this borrowed form stayed mainly in religious use. Sermons, glosses, and biblical texts kept it attached to annunciations, guardians, and choirs of heaven. Sound change later pulled the initial vowel and consonants toward the modern English form.

Middle English shows forms like aungel and angel, and the modern spelling settled by the early modern period. The pronunciation kept changing, but the spiritual sense held firm. From there the word spread into figurative English for a gentle person, a rescuer, and later a financial backer. The path runs from a courier on earth to a being above it.