despatch
Other spellings change
Pronunciation change
Verb change
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Plain form |
Third-person singular |
Past tense |
Past participle |
Present participle |
- (transitive) If you despatch people or equipment somewhere, you send them there to do a particular task.
- Synonym: send
- Antonym: recall
- The government has reportedly despatched elite army troops to Baghdad.
- Vietnam despatched ships and aircraft Saturday to the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand.
- (transitive) If you despatch a message, package, etc., you send it.
- Before long, Edison was regularly despatching instructions to his lab up north.
- (transitive) If you despatch a living thing, you kill it.
- If the immune system has seen the viruses before, it can despatch them swiftly.
- His men swiftly despatched any French prisoners by beheading them.
Noun change
- (countable) A despatch is a message or report sent by a someone in a distant location.
- The New York Times ran 10 stories on Rwanda, half of them brief wire service despatches.
- (uncountable) despatch is part of an emergency response system, such as police or ambulance, which sends personnel to deal with emergencies.
- When despatch couldn't contact him, they called and asked me to check on him.
- (uncountable) The despatch of someone to a place is the act of sending them there to do a particular task.
- They recommended to the President the despatch of six thousand to eight thousand American combat forces.
- (uncountable) If you do something with despatch you finish it without wasting time.
- We want to make sure that that work continues with all due despatch and speed.