missive
Syllables: miss·ive/ˈmɪsɪv/
missive noun: a written message; a letter, note or memo.
Noun
missive (plural missives)
- A written message; a letter, note or memo.
- [Y]ou / Did pocket vp my Letters: and with taunts / Did gibe my Miſive out of audience.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
- The juvenile missives from his unmistakably phallic Twitter avatar came days after one of his rockets launched NASA’s first antiasteroid planetary-defense test[…]December 13 2021, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2021
- Letters sent between two parties in which one makes an offer and the other accepts it.
- One who is sent; a messenger.
- Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it came missives from the King, who all hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor,’ by which title these Weird Sisters saluted me and referred me to the coming on of time with ‘Hail king that shalt be.’c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
Adjective
missive (not comparable)
- Specially sent; intended or prepared to be sent.
- a letter missive
- Delivery of the Letters Missive1726, John Ayliffe, Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani: Or, A Commentary, by Way of Supplement to the Canons and Constitutions of the Church of England. […], London: […] D. Leach, and sold by John...
- Serving as a missile; intended to be thrown.
- In vain with Darts a diſtant War they try, / Short, and more ſhort the miſſive weapons fly.1700, [John] Dryden, “Cymon and Iphigenia, from Boccace”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 564
missive meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
missive in Tamil
- கடிதம்
missive in Urdu
- چٹھی, پیغام
missive in Bengali
- লিখিত বার্তা, চিঠি
missive in Malayalam
- communication, message, letter
- സന്ദേശം, പരിപ്രേഷണം, എഴുത്ത്, കത്ത്, കടിതം, കായിതം
More languagesFewer languages
- missive in Kannada
- ಸುದ್ದಿ, ಓಲೆ
Examples of missive in a sentence
- The contents of the missive show that Hori certainly knew his stuff.
- The missive from Arthur was a short but complete and propitiative acknowledgment of his error and fraility.
- The Daily Beast received a missive that Rep.
Forms of missive
| plural | missives |
|---|
Origin of missive
Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin missīvus, from mittō (“to send”).
Words formed from missive
Phrases with missive
Words that rhyme with missive
Questions about missive
- What does missive mean?
- Missive means a written message; a letter, note or memo.
- What is missive in Tamil?
- Missive in Tamil is கடிதம். See Missive meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is missive?
- Missive can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce missive?
- Missive is pronounced /ˈmɪsɪv/ (UK).
- What is the plural of missive?
- The plural of missive is missives.
Words near missive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: missive (page history and authors); missive (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); missive (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); missive (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); missive (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); missive (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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Cite this entry: “missive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/missive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.