Errand

How to spell errand

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce errand

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does errand mean?

1. nounA short trip made to carry out a small task, often on someone else's behalf.

Errand in a sentence

• She asked him to run a quick errand to the post office before lunch.

• The new assistant spent the morning on every errand the manager invented.

Where does errand come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Errand comes from the Old English noun ærende, which meant a message or a mission carried on someone's behalf. In its earliest use the word was about the words you delivered, not the trip itself; an errand was the spoken business you were sent to convey. It has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including Old Norse erendi and Old High German arunti, all carrying the same idea of a charge or commission to be discharged. Over the centuries the emphasis drifted from the message to the short journey made to deliver or accomplish it, which is how we arrive at the modern sense of popping out to run errands. The doubled r and the unstressed -and ending (sounding like a weak schwa, not the word 'and') are the small spelling traps, and they survive from that old ærende form rather than from any prefix or suffix.

How the word is built

• errand (single root from Old English ærende: message, mission); no separable prefix or suffix