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sortie

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Sortie

English

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WOTD – 10 July 2022

Etymology

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PIE word
*upó
A Hawker Hurricane Mark I 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 feminine past participle of sortir (“to exit, go out”),[1] 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.[2]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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sortie (plural sorties)

  1. (military, also attributively and figuratively)
    1. An attack made by troops from a besieged position; a sally.
      • 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:
        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.
    2. (aviation) An operational flight carried out by a single military aircraft.
      • 2019 May 8, Aron Heller, “These Jewish World War II Veterans Would Be Legends, if People Knew Their Stories”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN:
        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.
      • 2022 March 22, Maria Varenikova, Andrew E. Kramer, “How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets”, in The New York Times‎[2], →ISSN:
        They are vastly outnumbered: Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10.
  2. (by extension)
    1. An act of venturing out to do a task, etc.
      • 2007 April 14, Ed Vulliamy, “Absolute MacInnes”, in The Guardian‎[3]:
        ‘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.
      • 2019 July 8, Jeff Foust, “NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea”, in IEEE Spectrum‎[4], New York, N.Y.: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28 November 2021:
        Finally, the astronauts will descend to the lunar surface. After their sortie on the moon, they'll return to the orbital station.
    2. (figuratively)
      1. An act of trying to enter a new field of activity.
      2. (sports) An attacking move.
        • 1998, David Potter, Tom Campbell, Jock Stein: The Celtic Years‎[5], Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, published 2005, →ISBN:
          Kai Johansen made a sortie down the right and, running out of ideas, tried a shot from more than 20 yards.
    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”).
      • 1848, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter VII, in Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings; […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, book XII (The Field of Hastings), pages 331–332:
        [I]t was all encompassed by the palisades and breastworks, to which were but three sorties, whence the defenders might sally, or through which at need the vanguard might secure a retreat.
    5. (photography) A series of aerial photographs taken during the flight of an aircraft; (by extension) a photography session.

Hyponyms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also

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  • scramble (“emergency defensive air force mission to intercept attacking enemy aircraft”)

Verb

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sortie (third-person singular simple present sorties, present participle sortying or sortieing, simple past and past participle sortied)

  1. (intransitive) To carry out a sortie; to sally.
    • 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, →ISBN, pages 99–100:
      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.

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “sortie, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2021; “sortie, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ “sortie, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020; “sortie, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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Feminine past participle of sortir; from Latin sortīrī (“cast lots, divide, receive”), possibly influenced by a derivative of surgō (“get up, arise”). Compare Italian sortire (“produce”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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sortie f (plural sorties)

  1. exit, way out
    Antonym: entrée
  2. act of exiting
  3. end; final part of
  4. release (of a film, book, album etc)
    Synonyms: édition, parution
  5. (school) outing, trip (lasting no longer than a day)
  6. (military) leave, sally, sortie
  7. (electronics) output, connector
    Synonym: prise

Usage notes

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The meaning "end, release" is used of things such as school, theater etc. where a literal "exit" also occurs.

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • → Ottoman Turkish: صورتی (sorti)

See also

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Participle

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sortie f sg

  1. feminine singular of sorti

Further reading

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Anagrams

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