missive

Specially sent; intended or prepared to be sent.

Adjective

  1. Specially sent; intended or prepared to be sent.
    • a letter missive
    • Delivery of the Letters Missive - 1726, 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...
  2. 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, […],...

Origin

15th century; from Medieval Latin missīvus, from mittō (“to send”).

Related

mission for terms etymologically related to send

Derived

letter missive

Noun

  1. 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,...
    • 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,...
    • The Madonna letters, which are interspersed with more personal missives in this curious epistolary memoir, accumulate into a rap about the downsides of celebrity - the problems of ageing, of invaded privacy, of becoming...
  2. Letters sent between two parties in which one makes an offer and the other accepts it.
  3. 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...

Forms

missives