Other forms: angels
An angel is a heavenly messenger. A guardian angel, the angel appeared, an angel of mercy.
The word means messenger, which is the job rather than the appearance: wings and haloes are later artistic conventions. Angels appear in Judaism, Christianity and Islam with different hierarchies. In ordinary use, an angel is a very kind person: she is an angel. An angel investor puts early money into a business. Note angelic; and that be an angel and fetch it is a standard piece of British domestic flattery.
1nounangelA heavenly messenger.~98%
“In the story, an angel came down from heaven with a message.”
2nounnounA very kind person.~2%
“You're an angel for looking after the kids tonight!”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
angel is a messenger or kind person.
Greek angelos means a messenger, and it translated a Hebrew word meaning the same thing. Evangelist is the same root — a bringer of good news — so an angel and the gospel are named from one job.
Middle English
aungel
English, today
angel
Built from
From Middle English aungel. From Middle English aungel, angel, from Old English anġel, either a modification of enġel after its etymon Latin angelus (through the intermediate of Proto-West Germanic angil) or a reborrowing from the Latin, which is in turn from Ancient Greek ἄγγελος (“messenger”); later reinforced by Anglo-Norman angele, angel, from the same Latin source. The religious sense of the Greek word first appeared in the Septuagint as a translation of the Hebrew word מַלְאָךְ (“messenger”) or מַלְאַךְ יהוה (“messenger of YHWH”). a doublet of Angelus. Use of the term in some churches to refer to a church official derives from interpreting the "angels" of the Seven churches of Asia in Revelation as being bishops or ministers rather than angelic beings.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA