sortie

noun

1. (also, attributive, figuratively)An attack made by troops from a besieged position; a sally.
2. (also, attributive, figuratively)An operational flight carried out by a single military aircraft.

   “Their aircraft had no belly gunners and were at the mercy of Luftwaffe fighters that attacked from below. Whenever they lifted off on a mission, they departed with the knowledge that this sortie could easily be their last.”

   “They are vastly outnumbered: Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10.”

3. (broadly)An act of venturing out to do a task, etc.

   “‘I'm just not interested in the whole class crap that seems to needle you and all the tax-payers,’ the teenager tells some ‘pre-historic monster’ of an adult, with a ‘cool’ snobbishness which MacInnes's companion on many of his Notting Hill sorties, the late Professor Richard Wollheim, compared to the ‘Sang Froid’ of Baudelaire's Dandy as he cruised through Fin-de-Siecle Paris with a similar sensibility, or lack of it.”

   “Finally, the astronauts will descend to the lunar surface. After their sortie on the moon, they'll return to the orbital station.”

4. (broadly, figuratively)An act of trying to enter a new field of activity.
5. (broadly, figuratively)An attacking move.

   “Kai Johansen made a sortie down the right and, running out of ideas, tried a shot from more than 20 yards.”

6. (broadly)An operational flight carried out by a spacecraft involving a return to Earth.
7. (broadly)Synonym of sally port (“an entry to or opening into a fortification to enable a sally”).

   “[I]t was all encompassed by the palisades and breastworks, to which were but three sorties, whence the defenders might sally, or through which at need the vanguard might secure a retreat.”

8. (broadly)A series of aerial photographs taken during the flight of an aircraft; (by extension) a photography session.

verb

1. (intransitive)To carry out a sortie; to sally.

   “Five Italian warships identified as two cruisers and three destroyers, sortied down the Albanian coast during the morning of 4 March and commenced shelling the coastal road near Himara and Port Palermo, under cover of a strong fighter escort of G.50bis and CR 42s from the 24º Gruppo CT.”

name

1. A surname.