mandate

Pluralmandates

Formsmandates, mandating, mandated

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An official or authoritative command or order; also, a formal authorization or commission to act.

   The health department's mandate required restaurants to post their inspection scores.

   Acting under a mandate from the board, the director restructured three departments.

   Similarorder, command, obligation

   Note

   The oldest meaning, and the root of all the rest. English took it in 1521 from Latin mandātum, a charge or commission, from mandō, literally "to put into one's hands." That picture still fits, because a mandate is authority handed over and not merely an order given. It belongs to formal, legal and administrative prose beside ordinances and injunctions, and its nearest everyday relatives are obligation and compulsion.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The authority to pursue a course of action, granted to a politician or government by the electorate through an election victory.

   The landslide victory gave the party a strong mandate to overhaul the tax code.

   Critics argued the narrow win provided no real mandate for such sweeping reforms.

   Similarauthority, warrant

   Note

   In politics, authority flows from the ballot box: a mandate is what the winners say the voters gave them. It usually takes for, as when Leroy G. Dorsey describes Tyler and Polk reading their election results as a mandate for the annexation of Texas. The claim is easily contested, so the word turns up in denial as often as in triumph. The Observer said in 2017 that May had "neither mandate nor credible grounds" for her stance.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To make something mandatory; to require it by law, rule, or official policy.

   Several cities now mandate composting for restaurants and grocery stores.

   Congress mandated annual safety inspections for commercial trucks.

   Similarrequire, impose, decree, prescribe, stipulate

   Oppositeprohibit, ban, forbid

   Note

   What gets mandated here is the requirement, not the person: coverage, testing, masks. The verb often takes a that-clause, and writers commonly put must inside it. A federal law mandates that an insurer must provide coverage; a school superintendent mandates that children must be masked. The verb already carries the compulsion, so dropping must loses nothing.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To formally require a person or body to act in a particular way, or to grant them the authority to do so; to command.

   Federal regulations mandate airlines to compensate passengers for lengthy delays.

   The treaty mandated each signatory to reduce emissions within a decade.

   Similarrequire, oblige, order, direct, compel

   Oppositeforbid, prohibit

   Note

   English had the noun for a century before the verb arrived in 1623, partly from Latin and partly from the noun itself. In this use the object is a person or body, followed by to and a verb. Garages mandate their representatives to vote, and a state mandates its department to keep reports confidential. When the object is the rule itself rather than whoever must obey it, the meaning shifts to making something compulsory.

5. 5
   nounCanadacountable

   The period during which an elected government or official holds power; a term of office.

   The prime minister promised to balance the budget before the end of his mandate.

   During its previous mandate, the coalition passed major climate legislation.

   Similarterm, tenure

   Note

   In Canadian usage the word measures time rather than authority. Writing of Pierre Trudeau in 2000, The Globe and Mail spoke of "his last mandate, from 1980 to 1984," meaning a span of years, much like a term of office. Readers elsewhere may hear the electoral authority instead. For a wider audience, give the dates or say "term."

6. 6
   nounhistoricalcountable

   An authorization issued by the League of Nations directing a member nation to administer a former colony or conquered territory, as with Germany's colonies after World War I.

   The League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Mesopotamia in 1920.

   Japan administered several Pacific islands under a mandate established after the First World War.

   Note

   A term fixed to the settlement after World War I, so it belongs to historical writing, not current affairs. The League took the Latin idea of a charge, literally something put into one's hands, and gave it a treaty meaning: a member state administered a territory on the League's behalf. It usually takes over (a mandate over Mesopotamia). The land itself shares the name, the mandated territory.

7. 7
   nounhistoricalcountable

   A territory administered by a member nation under a League of Nations mandate, such as the former German colonies after World War I.

   Tanganyika, a British mandate, gained independence as part of modern Tanzania.

   Roads and railways were built across the mandate during the years of French administration.

   Note

   Here the order gives its name to the land it covers, so the word names both a legal status and a place. Former German and Ottoman territories such as Palestine, Syria and Tanganyika were mandates in this sense. They were held formally on the League's behalf rather than owned outright. Like the League order itself, the word belongs to history writing.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To assign a territory to a nation for administration under a mandate, or to administer it on that basis.

   The Allied powers agreed to mandate the former Ottoman provinces to Britain and France.

   South West Africa was mandated to South Africa in 1920.

   Similarassign, entrust

   Note

   The verb grew partly out of the noun, and here it belongs to the same postwar world as the League of Nations order. It is usually passive, with the territory as subject and the governing nation after to: a province was mandated to Britain. Like the noun, it is a word for history rather than current affairs.

9. 9
   nouncolloquial

   Alternative form of man date.

   He insisted the concert wasn't a mandate, just two friends with extra tickets.

   Their monthly mandate usually means barbecue and a ball game.

   Note

   A pun, not a descendant: this rarer spelling is simply man plus date, unrelated to the Latin word behind the official command. The joke works because the two collide on the page, as in Graham Linehan's The IT Crowd (2007), where Roy protests, "It is not a mandate." Keep it for playful, colloquial writing. The open spelling man date spares readers a detour into politics.

10. 10
    verbdialectalScotlandtransitive

    To say a sermon or speech aloud over and over as practice before delivering it.

    The seminarians mandate their sermons each evening in the chapel.

    Before the ordination service, he mandated the homily until the cadences came naturally.

    Similarrehearse, recite

    Note

    A Scottish preacher's word for learning a sermon by heart and saying it aloud before delivery. In The Gospel Message (1796), Charles Simeon calls the "Mandating of Sermons, or repeating them from memory" a custom of the whole Church of Scotland. He notes that Archbishop Secker disapproved of it. The habit lasted: in Lest We Forget (1951), Robert James Drummond had a single evening to mandate two discourses.

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