expedition

From Middle French expédition, and its source, Latin expeditio.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/

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• Rhymes: -ɪʃən

expedition (countable and uncountable, plural expeditions)

1. (obsolete) The act of expediting something; prompt execution.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:

     My Lord the great Commander of the worlde, […]
     Hath now in armes ten thouſand Ianiſaries, […]
     And for the expedition of this war,
     If he thinke good, can from his garriſons,
     UUithdraw as many more to follow him.

2. A military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory.
3. (now rare) The quality of being expedite; speed, quickness.
   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:

     one of them began to come nearer our boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had loaded my gun with all possible expedition […] .

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 331:

     he presently exerted his utmost agility, and with surprizing expedition ascended the hill.

   • 1834 [1799], Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, “The Devil's Thoughts”, in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume II, London: W. Pickering, page 86:

     He saw the same Turnkey unfetter a man / With but little expedition, / Which put him in mind of the long debate / On the Slave-trade abolition.

   • 1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society, published 2010, page 33:

     The photographer had photographed, the doctor had certified life extinct, the pathologist had inspected the body in situ as a prelude to conducting his autopsy – all with an expedition quite contrary to the proper pace of things, merely in order to clear the way for the visiting irregular, as the Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Crime and Ops) had liked to call him.

4. (military) An important or long journey, for example a march or a voyage
5. A trip, especially a long one, made by a person or a group of people for a specific purpose

   a naval expedition

   a scientific expedition

   an expedition across the Alps

6. (collective) The group of people making such excursion.
7. The process or activities of performing expediter tasks.

• fishing expedition

expedition (third-person singular simple present expeditions, present participle expeditioning, simple past and past participle expeditioned)

1. (intransitive) To take part in a trip or expedition; to travel.
   • 1950, Sewage and Industrial Wastes Engineering, volume 21, page 588:

     The attendance was given color by the ISO women who graced some of the sessions, attended the social events and expeditioned around the famous spots in Washington and its periphery area.

   • 1998, Greg Child, Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas, page 185:

     I feel uprooted from the vital connections to Salley, to home, stranded with only the mountain and my fellow madmen as company. These thoughts appear like a mirage, a hallucination, a symptom of the schizophrenia of expeditioning.

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “expedition”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

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expedition c

1. an expedition, a journey, a mission
2. an office

• expeditionschef

• expedition in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• expedition in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• expedition in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)