Evangelist
/ɪˈvændʒəlɪst/noun
A preacher of the Christian gospel, or by extension anyone who promotes a cause with missionary energy.
The Greek roots
Literally: “bringer of good news”
The story of the word
εὐαγγέλιον first meant the reward you paid a runner for good news, then the good news itself, and only afterwards one particular message. Old English translated it piece by piece as gōdspel, good news, which wore down to gospel. The four evangelists earned the title as writers; the sense of a travelling revival preacher is a nineteenth-century American development, and the tech industry borrowed it wholesale in the 1980s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Church Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1200
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The evangelist filled a football ground for three nights running.
He is an evangelist for the metric system, which makes dinner tiring.