means A piece of information or communication sent from one person to another, whether spoken, written, or transmitted by some other means.

from From the Latin 'mittere,' meaning 'to send,' which gave rise to 'missaticum' — a thing sent — via the Latin past participle 'missus.' This passed into Old French as 'message' before crossing into English in the medieval period. The same 'mittere' root quietly seeded a whole family of sending-words: 'mission,' 'missile,' 'emit,' 'transmit' — all things hurled, dispatched, or let fly toward somewhere else. The 'messenger' is the same word with an extra 'n' that wandered in over the centuries, an unexplained intruder it shares with 'passenger' and 'harbinger.'