mission creep
mission creep noun: gradual unplanned expansion of the objectives, scope, and/or cost of a project, especially a military mission.
Noun
mission creep (uncountable)
- Gradual unplanned expansion of the objectives, scope, and/or cost of a project, especially a military mission.
- Initially presented as a purely humanitarian mission, Operation Restore Hope gradually shifted from feeding Somalis to fighting them. Unaware of the "mission creep," the public was outraged when 18 U.S. soldiers died in an October 1993 fire fight.1994 September 19, Mark Thompson, “Haiti: The Past As Prelude”, in Time
- General John Shalikashvili . . . said it was important to set a target date of one year and then bring the troops home, because "in the absence of that, you find yourself staying there, and that's how very often mission creep comes in."1995 October 23, Elaine Sciolino, “One-Year Limit on U.S. Troops in Bosnia Now an 'Estimate'”, in New York Times, retrieved 27 May 2011
Questions about mission creep
- What does mission creep mean?
- Mission creep means gradual unplanned expansion of the objectives, scope, and/or cost of a project, especially a military mission.
- What part of speech is mission creep?
- Mission creep is a noun.
Words near mission creep in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mission creep (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-au-mission creep.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mission creep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mission_creep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.