Other forms: dispatched, dispatches, dispatching
To dispatch something is to send it off where it is needed, quickly and on purpose. The warehouse dispatches your parcel the same evening; the control room dispatches an ambulance to the address.
It works for people and for goods: you dispatch troops, a reporter, a repair van, a crate of oranges. As a noun it is both the sending — awaiting dispatch, the dispatch department — and the message sent, a dispatch from the front line. There is a colder meaning too: to dispatch an animal or an enemy is to kill it, and to dispatch a task or a plate of food is to finish it off fast. In older, formal use dispatch means speed itself, which is where with all possible dispatch comes from. Stress the second syllable, dis-PATCH, and do not be thrown by the spelling despatch, which survives on British shipping paperwork.
1verbdispatchTo send someone or something off to a place, for a purpose.
“The order was dispatched on Friday and arrived on Tuesday.”
2verbdealTo deal with a job quickly and finish it.
“He dispatched the paperwork in an hour and went home.”
3verbkillTo kill, especially quickly and deliberately.
“The vet dispatched the injured deer at the roadside.”
4nounactThe act of sending something off.
“The crates are packed and waiting for dispatch.”
5nounofficialAn official message or report, especially from a war zone or an embassy.
“Her dispatch from the border ran on the front page.”
Dispatch came into English through diplomacy. Its first known written use is by a bishop in 1517 who had studied in Italy and served as commissioner to Spain, and the word looks like Spanish despachar or Italian dispacciare. The rest is uncertain, though the second part may go back to Latin words for fastening or shackling — making dispatch an un-shackling, a setting loose. On that reading it shares a root with impeach.
Latin
-pedicāre — to entrap, shackle
Vulgar Latin
*pactāre — to fasten"
Italian
dispacciare
Spanish
despachar
English, today
dispatch
Spanish despachar and/or Italian dispacciare. Further etymology is uncertain. For first element des-, see dis-. Second element probably from either Vulgar Latin pactāre (“to fasten"”), pactiare or Latin -pedicāre (“to entrap, shackle”), from pedica, from pēs. Ultimately related to impeach through shared Latin root. The first known use in writing (in the past tense, spelled as dispached) is by Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall in 1517. This would be unusually early for a borrowing from a Romance language other than French, but Tunstall had studied in Italy and was Commissioner to Spain, so this word may have been borrowed through diplomatic circles. The alternative spelling despatch was introduced in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, probably by accident. Compare typologically deliver (for the meaning to bring or transport) (< dē- + līberō).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA