The word
Evangelist used to conjer up images of gospel preachers, trying to convert people to christianity. But now there seems to be new definition appearing in the english language. I first noticed this when google hired Vint Cerf as "
Chief Internet Evangelist" now we have Guy Kawasaki's "
The Art of Evangelism" and Jeremy Zawdony from Yahoo advertising for a "
Developer Network Evangelist". Clearly something is changing...
The American Heritage Dictionary picks up some of this 'newer' meaning in definition 2 of the related word evangelism - "Militant zeal for a cause".
e·van·gel·ism (ĭ-văn'jə-lĭz'əm) pronunciation
n.
1. Zealous preaching and dissemination of the gospel, as through missionary work.
2. Militant zeal for a cause.
Source:
http://www.answers.com/evangelismOther dictionaries only seem to list the older "gospel preacher" meaning.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=evangelistSo we might think this whole new meaning for evangelist is an exciting new "
Web 2.0" thing? Well it turns that that definition has been around for a while. The
OED lists this 1978 quotation as an early example of the definition they call
"A zealous advocate of a cause or promulgator of a doctrine.""1978 P. HOWARD Weasel Words xxi. 90 It makes sense to say that the French Revolution found its evangelist in Rousseau; that Mary Whitehouse is the evangelist of cleaning up television. "
That being said, this meaning is a a lot newer than when it was first use to refer to a gospel writer (
Mathew,
Mark,
Luke or
John).
"1297 R. GLOUC. (1724) 67 And sende Sent Mark be euangelist in to Egypt. "
Quotations taken from the
Oxford English Dictionary
