mandate

Noun is borrowed from Latin mandātum (“a charge, order, command, commission, injunction”), neut of. mandātus, past participle of mandāre (“to commit to one's charge, order, command, commission, literally to put into one's hands”), from manus (“hand”) + dare (“to put”). Compare command, commend, demand, remand.

The verb is from the noun.

Noun

A map showing Middle Eastern and African mandates.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmændeɪt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England)

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Verb

• IPA^(key): /ˈmændeɪt/, /mænˈdeɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪt

mandate (plural mandates)

1. An official or authoritative command; an order or injunction; a commission; a judicial precept; an authorization.

   Synonyms: compulsion, obligation

   • 2017 March 27, “The Observer view on triggering article 50”, in The Observer‎:

     Instead, May, more sheep than shepherd, has feebly allowed herself to be driven ever further towards an extreme, inflexible, take-it-or-leave-it stance for which she has neither mandate nor credible grounds.

2. (politics) The order or authority to do something, as granted to a politician by the electorate.
   • 2002, Leroy G. Dorsey, The Presidency and Rhetorical Leadership, Texas A&M University Press, →ISBN, page 30:

     John Tyler and James K. Polk both regarded the election results as a mandate for the annexation of Texas.

3. (Canada) A period during which a government is in power.
   • 2000 October 6, John Richards, “Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1919-2000”, in The Globe and Mail‎, archived from the original on 9 October 2019:

     Throughout his last mandate, from 1980 to 1984, Mr. Trudeau insisted that we see ourselves solely as Canadians, that we set aside the historic compromises that underlie Canada as a federation.

4. (historical) An order by the League of Nations to a member nation to establish a government responsible for a conquered territory, as the colonies of Germany after World War I.
   1. (historical) Such a territory.

• dual mandate
• mandate fraud

mandate (third-person singular simple present mandates, present participle mandating, simple past and past participle mandated)

1. (Discuss⁽⁺⁾ this sense) To authorize.
2. To make mandatory.

From man +‎ date.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmæn.deɪt/

mandate (plural mandates)

1. (uncommon) Alternative form of man date: a date between two men.
   • 2007 September 7, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 2, Episode 3:

     Moss: Oh, he's long gone, although Roy's got a mandate with him.
     Roy: It is not a mandate. I am not a man-woman. We are not married. I am not your wife!

• “mandate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “mandate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “mandate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• Homophones: mandatent, mandates

mandate

1. inflection of mandater:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative
   2. first-person singular present subjunctive
   3. second-person singular imperative

mandate f

1. plural of mandata

mandate

1. inflection of mandare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative
   3. feminine plural past participle

• Damante, damante

mandāte

1. vocative masculine singular of mandātus

mandate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of mandar combined with te
2. inflection of mandatar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative