expedition
UK/ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/
expedition noun: a military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory.
Noun
expedition (countable and uncountable, plural expeditions)
- A military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory.
- Once established in their capital at Nanking, occupied March, 1853, and renamed “Heavenly Capital” (T’ien-ching), the Taipings sent out an expedition to take Peking which again made striking gains initially, but was eventually slowed, isolated, and defeated.1960, “The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings”, in Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, Chester Tan, compilers, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume II, New York; London: Columbia University Press...
- An important or long journey, for example a march or a voyage.
- 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
- The group of people making such excursion.
- The process or activities of performing expediter tasks.
- The quality of being expedite; speed, quickness.
- 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 […].1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC
- he presently exerted his utmost agility, and with surprizing expedition ascended the hill.1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 331
- The act of expediting something; prompt execution.
- 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.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
- My Lord the great Commander of the worlde, […]
Verb
expedition (third-person singular simple present expeditions, present participle expeditioning, simple past and past participle expeditioned)
- To take part in a trip or expedition; to travel.
- 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.1950, Sewage and Industrial Wastes Engineering, volume 21, page 588
- 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.1998, Greg Child, Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas, page 185
expedition meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
expedition in Hindi
- expedition, campaign
- अभियान abhiyān
expedition in Tamil
- வேகம், படையெடுப்பு, குறிக்கோள் பயணம்
expedition in Marathi
- expedition
- मोहीम mohīm
expedition in Urdu
- فور, عجلت
More languagesFewer languages
- expedition in Bengali
- অভিযান, বিশেষ উদ্দেশ্যে যাত্রা, দ্রুততা
- expedition in Malayalam
- പര്യവേഷണം paryavēṣaṇaṁ, ദൃക്ക് dr̥kkŭ
- expedition in Kannada
- ಪ್ರಯಾಣ, ಉದ್ದೇಶಿತ ಪ್ರಯಾಣ, ದಂಡಯಾತ್ರೆ, ಯುದ್ಧಕಾರ್ಯ
- expedition in Sanskrit
- यामन् yāman
- expedition in Malay
- ekspedisi, penerokaan
- expedition in Indonesian
- ekspedisi
Examples of expedition in a sentence
- an expedition across the Alps
- Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition was lost with two ships and 129 men, inspiring dozens of subsequent expeditions to find and rescue him, none of them successful.1989 May, Jeff MacInnis, “Braving the Northwest Passage”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 586:
- 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.1834 [1799], Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, “The Devil's Thoughts”, in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume II, London...
Forms of expedition
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | expeditions |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | expeditions |
| present participle | expeditioning |
| past participle | expeditioned |
| past | expeditioned |
Origin of expedition
From Middle French expédition, and its source, Latin expeditio.
Words formed from expedition
Words that rhyme with expedition
- partition
- position
- proposition
- transition
- mission
- condition
- commission
- transmission
- addition
- admission
- attrition
- remission
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- rendition
- exhibition
- submission
- ignition
- inhibition
- inquisition
- intromission
- magician
- omission
- suspicion
- tradition
- dentition
- edition
- patrician
- politician
- tuition
- acquisition
- circumposition
- decommission
- fission
- nutrition
- perdition
- permission
- phonetician
- prohibition
- superposition
- volition
- academician
- aesthetician
- Apician
- clinician
- coalition
- disquisition
- emission
- fruition
- Galician
- on a mission
- optician
- postposition
- premonition
- recommission
- retransition
- sedition
- superstition
- titian
- abligurition
- admonition
- adposition
Questions about expedition
- What does expedition mean?
- Expedition means a military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory.
- What is expedition in Hindi?
- Expedition in Hindi is अभियान (abhiyān). See Expedition meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use expedition in a sentence?
- an expedition across the Alps
- What part of speech is expedition?
- Expedition can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce expedition?
- Expedition is pronounced /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/ (UK).
- What is the plural of expedition?
- The plural of expedition is expeditions.
Words near expedition in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: expedition (page history and authors); अभियान (Hindi) (page history and authors); expedition (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); मोहीम (Marathi) (page history and authors); expedition (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Expedition (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ദൃക്ക് (Malayalam) (page history and authors); expedition (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-expedition.ogg.
Cite this entry: “expedition.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/expedition. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.