errands

Noun

errand (plural errands)

1. (archaic, literary) A mission or quest.
   • What will ye, said King Arthur, and what is your errand?1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum XXIII”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book VII, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer...

   Synonyms:

   run

2. A mundane mission of no great consequence, concerning household or business affairs (dropping items by, doing paperwork, going to a friend's house, etc.)
   • The errands before he could start the project included getting material at the store and getting the tools he had lent his neighbors.

   Synonyms:

   run

3. The purpose of such a journey.
   • Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St....1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
4. An oral message trusted to a person for delivery.
   • I had not taught thee then the alphabet
     Of flowers, how they, devicefully being set
     And bound up, might with speechless secrecy
     Deliver errands mutely and mutually.1633, John Donne, Elegy VII

See all 6 meanings of errand