sortie

Etymology

PIE word *upó fighter plane of No. 85 Squadron, Royal Air Force, at Debden in Essex, England, U.K., about to take off on a night sortie (sense 1.2) to intercept enemy aircraft on 14 March 1941.]] The noun is borrowed from French sortie (“act of exiting; exit, way out; (military) sally, sortie”), the past participle of sortir (“to exit, go out”), from Old French sortir, from Latin sortīrī, the present active infinitive of sortior (“to cast or draw lots; to choose, select; to distribute, divide; to obtain, receive; to share”), from sors (“something used to determine chances, a lot; casting or drawing of lots; decision by lot; a share”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind, tie together; a thread”)), possibly influenced by surrēctus (“arisen, having been caused to arise; gotten up, having been gotten up”), the perfect passive participle of surgō (“to arise, get up, rise”), from subrigō (“to lift up; to straighten”), from sub- (prefix meaning ‘beneath, under’) + regō (“to direct, guide, steer; to govern, rule; to manage, oversee”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to right oneself, straighten; just; right”)). The verb is derived from the noun.

noun

1. (military, also attributively and figurative)
   1. An attack made by troops from a besieged position; a sally.
      The events of these sieges show that a bold and vigorous sortie in force might carry destruction through every part of a besieger's approaches, where the guard is injudiciously disposed and ill commanded; but that if due precautions have been observed in forming the approaches and posting the defenders, any sortie from a besieged place must be checked with loss in their advance, when the approaches are still distant; or when the approaches are near, should a sortie succeed in pushing into them by a sudden rush, the assailants must inevitably be driven out again in a moment, with terrible slaughter. 1827, John T[homas] Jones, “[Notes.] Note 35 [Observations on the Several Sorties Made by the Garrisons of the Places Besieged in Spain].”, in Journals of Sieges Carried on by the Army under the Duke of Wellington, in Spain, between the Years 1811 and 1814.[…], volume II, London: […] [C. Roworth] for T[homas] Egerton,[…], →OCLC, page 369
   2. (aviation) An operational flight carried out by a single military">military aircraft.
      Their aircraft had no belly gunners and were at the mercy of Luftwaffe fighters that attacked from below. Whenever they lifted off on a mission, they departed with the knowledge that this sortie could easily be their last. 2019-05-08, Aron Heller, “These Jewish World War II Veterans Would Be Legends, if People Knew Their Stories”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
      They are vastly outnumbered: Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10. 2022-03-22, Maria Varenikova, Andrew E. Kramer, “How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
2. (by extension)
   1. An act of venturing out to do a task, etc.
      ‘I'm just not interested in the whole class crap that seems to needle you and all the tax-payers,’ the teenager tells some ‘pre-historic monster’ of an adult, with a ‘cool’ snobbishness which MacInnes's companion on many of his Notting Hill sorties, the late Professor Richard Wollheim, compared to the ‘Sang Froid’ of Baudelaire's Dandy as he cruised through Fin-de-Siecle Paris with a similar sensibility, or lack of it. 2007-04-14, Ed Vulliamy, “Absolute MacInnes”, in The Guardian
      Finally, the astronauts will descend to the lunar surface. After their sortie on the moon, they'll return to the orbital station. 8 July 2019, Jeff Foust, “NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea”, in IEEE Spectrum, New York, N.Y.: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-11-28
   2. (figurative)
      1. An act of trying to enter a new field of activity.
      2. (sports) An attacking move.
         Kai Johansen made a sortie down the right and, running out of ideas, tried a shot from more than 20 yards. 1998, David Potter, Tom Campbell, Jock Stein: The Celtic Years, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, published 2005
   3. (astronautics) An operational flight carried out by a spacecraft involving a return to Earth.
   4. (military) Synonym of sally port (“an entry to or opening into a fortification to enable a sally”)
   5. (photography) A series of aerial photographs taken during the flight of an aircraft; (by extension) a photography session.

verb

1. (intransitive) To carry out a sortie; to sally.
   Five Italian warships identified as two cruisers and three destroyers, sortied down the Albanian coast during the morning of 4 March and commenced shelling the coastal road near Himara and Port Palermo, under cover of a strong fighter escort of G.50bis and CR 42s from the 24º Gruppo CT. 1987, Christopher Shores, Brian Cull, with Nicola Malizia, “The Battles of Spring”, in Air War for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete 1940–41, London: Grub Street, pages 99–100