military expedition
- noun
- /ˈmɪlɪˌtɛri ˌɛkspɪˈdɪʃən/
- One example is a 16th-century West African bronze plaque that the museum acquired in 1933, one of several hundred such objects taken by a British military expedition from the royal city of Benin a few decades earlier.
- send a military expedition
Examples
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The United States participated with the allies in military expeditions against the Soviet Union in an attempt to overcome them, invade them, and set up another government.
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Thus, for two centuries, Englishmen and Americans mounted military expeditions into Canada.
Academic text (1998) -
Covers British military expeditions in Africa, Asia, and China.
Blog text (29) -
The US tends to lose its military expeditions because it is unwilling to do what is necessary to win.
Blog text (3) -
Consequently, they began sending out military expeditions to capture African forest elephants in the territories to the south of Egypt.
Academic text (2010) -
But Tuareg bands also scuttled well-defended French military expeditions, which they attacked aggressively.
Academic text (2002) -
Dingiswayo's military expeditions were successful largely because he had restructured the former fighting units of different lineages into unified, age-graded regiments.
Academic text (1999) -
In late 1665, the western Iroquois again made peace with the French, but the Mohawks remained aloof, and in January 1666, the French governor, the Marquis de Tracy, sent a military expedition against them.
Academic text (2010) -
In return for his collaboration with the Spaniards in several military expeditions, he was also awarded an encomienda, the status of caballero, and a coat of arms, and became one of the richest and most powerful men in sixteenth-century Quito.
Academic text (1999) -
The general organized a military expedition to secure the border against invading forces.
Synonyms
An action by soldiers that involves fighting
A planned action by armed forces to achieve a goal
A planned series of actions by soldiers to reach a goal in one area during a set time
A task given to a group of soldiers to reach a clear goal
A military force that goes into another country to attack and take control
How Large
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'military' (relating to soldiers/war) with 'expedition' (an organized journey for a specific purpose): together they denote an organized military journey or campaign to achieve an objective. This is a regular compositional pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Military expedition comes from the clear image of military, meaning soldiers, setting out on an expedition, a planned journey into another place to reach a goal. So it means 'a planned armed campaign in a foreign country'.