Other forms: sorties
A sortie is a brief attack out from a defended place. Make a sortie, a night sortie, the sortie failed.
In air forces the word means one flight by one aircraft, so a hundred sorties may be twenty aircraft flying five times. The French means an exit, which is what it still says on doors there.
1nounsortieA brief attack out from a defended place.
“The defenders made a sortie from the castle at night and burned the enemy's siege towers.”
sortie is an attack.
French sortie means an exit, from sortir, to go out.
Proto-Indo-European
*ser- — to bind, tie together; a thread
Latin
sortīrī
Old French
sortir
French
sortie — act of exiting; exit, way out; (military) sally, sortie
English, today
sortie
Built from
The noun is borrowed from French sortie (“act of exiting; exit, way out; (military) sally, sortie”), the feminine past participle of sortir (“to exit, go out”), from Old French sortir, from Latin sortīrī, the present active infinitive of sortior (“to cast or draw lots; to choose, select; to distribute, divide; to obtain, receive; to share”), from sors (“something used to determine chances, a lot; casting or drawing of lots; decision by lot; a share”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ser- (“to bind, tie together; a thread”)), possibly influenced by surrēctus (“arisen, having been caused to arise; gotten up, having been gotten up”), the perfect passive participle of surgō (“to arise, get up, rise”), from subrigō (“to lift up; to straighten”), from sub- + regō (“to direct, guide, steer; to govern, rule; to manage, oversee”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₃reǵ- (“to right oneself, straighten; just; right”)). The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA