errand

• arrand

From Middle English erande, erende, from Old English ǣrende (“errand, message; mission; embassy; answer, news, tidings, business, care”), from Proto-Germanic *airundiją (“message, errand”), from Proto-Germanic *airuz (“messenger, servant”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *ey- (“to go”). Cognate with German dialectal Erend, Ernd (“order, contract, task, errand”), Danish ærinde (“errand”), Swedish ärende (“errand”), Norwegian ærend (“errand”), Icelandic eyrindi, erindi (“errand”).

• enPR: ěr'-ənd, IPA^(key): /ˈɛɹənd/

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• Rhymes: -ɛɹənd

errand (plural errands)

1. A journey undertaken to accomplish some task.
   1. (literary or archaic) A mission or quest.
      • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur

        What will ye, said King Arthur, and what is your errand?

      • 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

        Few have ever come hither through greater peril or on an errand more urgent.

        In this evil hour I have come on an errand over many dangerous leagues to Elrond: a hundred and ten days I have journeyed all alone.

   2. A mundane mission of no great consequence, concerning household or business affairs (dropping items by, doing paperwork, going to a friend's house, etc.)

      The errands before he could start the project included getting material at the store and getting the tools he had lent his neighbors.

      I'm going to town on some errands.

2. The purpose of such a journey.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0147:

     Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

3. An oral message trusted to a person for delivery.
   • John Donne

     I had not taught thee then the alphabet
     Of flowers, how they, devicefully being set
     And bound up, might with speechless secrecy
     Deliver errands mutely and mutually.

• fool's errand
• lost errand

errand (third-person singular simple present errands, present participle erranding, simple past and past participle erranded)

1. (transitive) To send someone on an errand.

   All the servants were on holiday or erranded out of the house.

2. (intransitive) To go on an errand.

   She spent an enjoyable afternoon erranding in the city.

• Darren, Renard, darner