Picture a people in trouble who have been promised that one person is coming. He has been chosen — in the old picture, oil was poured on his head to mark him out — and when he arrives he will lift the whole people out of their trouble. You can think of messiah as that picture: one chosen person, a promise, and a crowd that is waiting. Everything the word does later keeps some part of that: who the person is, which tradition is waiting, and how seriously the waiting is meant.
From the word’s history
The word goes back to Biblical Hebrew māšîaḥ, meaning 'anointed' — marked out with oil as a king or priest was. It travelled through Aramaic məšīḥā, Ancient Greek Messías and Latin Messīās into Middle English Messyas, and then into English. The old sense of 'the one who has been chosen and marked' is still what holds the modern uses together.
這個字可以追到聖經希伯來文 māšîaḥ，意思是「受膏者」——像立王或立祭司那樣被抹油做記號的人。它經過亞蘭文 məšīḥā、古希臘文 Messías、拉丁文 Messīās，再從中古英文 Messyas 進到英文。「被選定、被做記號的那一位」這個老意思，正好是今天各種用法共同的骨架。
Wiktionary entry 'messiah' supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:324669827): Middle English Messyas < Latin Messīās < Ancient Greek Μεσσίας < Aramaic ܡܫܺܝܚܳܐ (məšīḥā) < Biblical Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ, 'anointed').
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