Mission

How to spell mission

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mission

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mission mean?

1. nounAn important assignment, operation, or purpose that a person or group is sent or committed to carry out.
2. nounAn organised effort, or the building used, to spread a faith or provide charitable aid to a community.

Mission in a sentence

• The team accepted a difficult mission to restore the flooded warehouse.

• The old stone mission near the harbour still offers meals to the homeless.

• The company defined its mission as making clean water affordable.

• Her grandparents ran a small mission in a remote mountain village.

Where does mission come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin missio, meaning 'a sending' or 'a releasing', which was formed from the verb mittere, 'to send', and its past participle missus. In classical use missio could describe dismissing soldiers or releasing gladiators, so the core idea was always about sending someone off with a purpose. English adopted it in the sixteenth century, at first largely in religious contexts: a mission was a sending out of people to spread a faith, and the workers were missionaries. From there the sense broadened to any task someone is sent or assigned to carry out, and later to military and space operations. The same mittere root still powers a large family of English words, including 'transmit', 'permit', 'dismiss' and 'submit', and that shared double-s in missus is exactly why mission keeps its doubled s before the -ion.

How the word is built

• miss- (from Latin mittere: to send)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)