Word.ws English Dictionary

missives

missives is the plural of missive.

Meaning of missive

Noun

missive (plural missives)

  1. (formal) 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...
  2. (in plural, Scots law) Letters sent between two parties in which one makes an offer and the other accepts it.
  3. (obsolete) 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...

See all 5 meanings of missive

Questions about missives

What is missives the plural of?
Missives is the plural of missive.

Words near missives in the dictionary

  1. missituate
  2. missituated
  3. missituates
  4. missituating
  5. missive
  6. missives
  7. missized
  8. misslanted
  9. misslaughter
  10. misslaughtered
  11. misslaughtering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: missives (page history and authors); missive (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “missives.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/missives. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.