angel [OE] Angels are to be found in the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religions. They are messengers from God, and the word angel comes ultimately from Greek angelos ‘messenger’. An angel was also the name given to an old English gold coin (known in full as the angel-noble) minted between the reigns of Edward IV and Charles I and stamped with the image of the Archangel Michael slaying a dragon. To be on the side of the angels is to be on the side of what is right. In a speech given at Oxford in 1864 the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) referred to the controversy that was then raging about Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species, saying: ‘Is man an ape or an angel?…I am on the side of the angels.’ The plant angelica [E16th] is the ‘angelic herb’ because it was believed to work against poison and disease.