expedition

Etymology

From Middle French expédition, and its source, Latin expeditio.

noun

1. (obsolete) The act of expediting something; prompt execution.
2. A military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory.
3. (now rare) The quality of being expedite; speed, quickness.
   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 photographer had photographed, the doctor had certified life extinct, the pathologist had inspected the body in situ as a prelude to conducting his autopsy – all with an expedition quite contrary to the proper pace of things, merely in order to clear the way for the visiting irregular, as the Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Crime and Ops) had liked to call him. 1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society, published 2010, page 33
4. (military) An important or long journey, for example a march or a voyage
5. 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
   an expedition across the Alps
6. (collective) The group of people making such excursion.
7. The process or activities of performing expediter tasks.

verb

1. (intransitive) 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