messager

Messager is a noun in English that denotes a sender of messages or the vehicle that conveys information from one point to another. In contemporary English, the spelling messenger is overwhelmingly preferred for general use, while messager survives chiefly in proper nouns and historical contexts.

Origin and usage: The word derives from Old French mesager (and its late Middle English forms), from a root meaning to send. The form messager persists in some regional spellings and in names of organizations or publications in French-speaking areas.

In common usage, the function of a messager is to transport information or signals. This can refer to a human courier, an envoy or emissary, or, more abstractly, to a mechanism that conveys data—such as signaling molecules in biology or software components that transmit messages between parts of a system. In biology, the standard term for the informational molecule is messenger RNA; the variant "messager" is not used in mainstream terminology.

See also: messenger, message, messaging, emissary, courier.