Origins
The English word "message" traces its origins back to the early 13th century, entering the language through Old French and ultimately deriving from Latin. Its etymological development reveals a layered history tied to the concept of sending and dispatching, both in physical and communicative senses.
The immediate source of "message" is Old French message, which denoted a "message," "errand," or "mission." This Old French term itself descended from Medieval Latin missāticum, a noun formed with the suffix -āticum, which was commonly used in Medieval Latin to create nouns indicating an action or result related to the verb stem. Missāticum meant "something sent" or "a sending," emphasizing the act or result of dispatching.
At the core of missāticum lies the Latin past participle missus, meaning "sent." Missus is the perfect passive participle of the verb mittere, which means "to send," "to let go," or "to release." This verb mittere is a fundamental Latin verb with a broad semantic field encompassing various forms of sending or dispatching, whether of objects, messages, or persons.
Latin Roots
The Latin mittere has given rise to several related English words through different morphological developments. For instance, "mission" derives from the same past-participial stem miss- combined with the suffix -ion, indicating the act or process of sending forth. Similarly, "missile" comes from the same root, referring to "something sent through the air," and "emit" means "to send out," all sharing the core notion of dispatch or release inherent in mittere.
The deeper Indo-European roots of mittere are less certain. Some etymologists propose a connection to the Proto-Indo-European root *meyth-, which carries the sense of "to change" or "to go." However, this connection remains speculative, and no definitive Proto-Indo-European root has been conclusively established for mittere. The semantic shift from "to go" or "to change" to "to send" is plausible but not firmly attested in the linguistic record.
In early English usage, the term "message" encompassed both the communication itself and the act of going or running an errand. A "messenger" was not merely a carrier of words but someone who physically ran a message as an errand, reflecting the word's broader sense of dispatching or sending forth. This dual sense highlights how the concept of sending was integral to the word's meaning.
Later History
The diplomatic sense of "message" was primary in early usage, referring to formal communications between sovereigns or official representatives. This specialized meaning reflects the importance of messages as official dispatches or missions in medieval and early modern political contexts. Over time, by the 17th century, the meaning of "message" broadened to encompass any written or verbal communication, losing some of its original formality and becoming a general term for information sent from one party to another.
Thus, the English "message" is a borrowing from Old French, which in turn is derived from Medieval Latin, ultimately rooted in the Latin verb mittere. Its semantic evolution from a formal errand or mission to a general communication reflects broader changes in social and communicative practices over the centuries. The word’s etymology is well-attested through its Latin and Romance antecedents, though the ultimate Proto-Indo-European origin of mittere remains uncertain.