On the chat today I mentioned that I recently visited an office where the new CEO changed their stagnant titles to very interestsing ones, such as "strategist" and "Chief of Staff." He wanted to change the Human Resources person's title to Evangelist because it emphasizes advocacy. However, he got pushback because of the religious meaning. Etymology.com says it comes from:
quote:
Late Latin evangelista, from Greek euangelistes "preacher of the gospel," literally "bringer of good news," from euangelizesthai "bring good news," from eu- "good" (see eu-) + angellein "announce," from angelos "messenger" (see angel).
Do you only consider evangelist to have a religious meaning?
[Corrected typo in title of this thread]This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,
December 14, 2013, 22:34
arnie
HR bringing good news?
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
December 15, 2013, 06:26
goofy
It doesn't just have a religious meaning.
quote:
d. transf. 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. 1988 Daily Tel. 20 Apr. 10/3 Cleese appears an unlikely evangelist for the shop assistants, double-glazing salesmen and managing directors of this world.
December 15, 2013, 20:53
Kalleh
No, it doesn't, but I was surprised that most dictionaries highlight that definition by far the most.
December 17, 2013, 20:56
Kalleh
I can't believe I had a typo in the title of this thread. Geez! I have corrected it.
I have found that there is a career path called either a technical evangelist or a technology evangelist. Wikipedia even has an article about it.
December 20, 2013, 05:45
zmježd
As (I believe) I said in the chat, evangelist is much used in Silicon Valley as a title (and it is not for HR personal). This usage goes back at least to the late eighties.An evangelist is basically like a PR rep on steroids. They go around praising some product to the faithful and the ignorant. As with most polysemous words, context is usually enough to disambiguate.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
December 20, 2013, 21:23
Kalleh
Yes, I agree about context. However, sometimes the definition can be nebulous, regardless of the context - probably not with the title of "Evangelist" in a business.