Mission comes from Latin 'missiō' (a sending), from 'mittere' (to send), initially referring to Jesuit religious expeditions.
An important assignment given to a person or group; a group of people sent to a foreign country for a specific purpose; the vocation or calling of a religious organization to spread its faith.
From Latin 'missiōnem' (accusative of 'missiō,' a sending out, a dispatching, a releasing), from 'missus,' past participle of 'mittere' (to send, to let go, to release, to throw). The PIE root is possibly *meyth₂- (to exchange, to go). In Latin 'missiō' had technical military senses: the formal discharge or release of soldiers from service — receiving a 'missio' meant being honorably demobilized. The religious sense — the dispatching of people to spread a faith — originated in Jesuit Latin of the 16th century, when the Society of Jesus organized 'missiones' to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. English borrowed this ecclesiastical Latin sense in the 1620s. The secular senses (an important