mission

pronunciation

How to pronounce mission in British English: UK [ˈmɪʃn] word uk audio image

How to pronounce mission in American English: US [ˈmɪʃn] word us audio image

Noun:

an organization of missionaries in a foreign land sent to carry on religious work
an operation that is assigned by a higher headquarters
a special assignment that is given to a person or group
the organized work of a religious missionary
a group of representatives or delegates

Word Origin

mission: mission: [16] Mission, etymologically a ‘sending’, is the hub of a large family of English words that come from the Latin verb mittere ‘let go, send’ or its stem miss-. Most are prefixed forms – admit, commit, permit, promise, transmit, etc – but the unadorned verb is represented in mass ‘eucharist’, mess, missile [17] (literally ‘something capable of being sent’), mission itself and its derivative missionary [17], and missive [15] (‘something sent’).The source of mittere is not known, but what does seem clear is that it originally meant ‘let go, throw’. This subsequently developed to ‘send’ and, in the post-classical period, to ‘put’ (hence French metre ‘put’).=> admit, commit, mess, message, missile, missive, permit, promise, submit, transmit

mission (n.): 1590s, "a sending abroad," originally of Jesuits, from Latin missionem (nominative missio) "act of sending, a despatching; a release, a setting at liberty; discharge from service, dismissal," noun of action from past participle stem of mittere "to send," oldest form probably *smittere, of unknown origin. Diplomatic sense of "body of persons sent to a foreign land on commercial or political business" is from 1620s. In American English, sometimes "an embassy" (1805). Meaning "dispatch of an aircraft on a military operation" (1929, American English) later extended to spacecraft flights (1962), hence, mission control (1964). As a style of furniture, said to be imitative of furniture in the buildings of original Spanish missions to North America, it is attested from 1900.