errand
n.a short trip you take to do a specific task, like going to the post office or buying groceries.
n.a short journey undertaken to deliver or collect something, or to perform a specific task on behalf of oneself or another.
“I have to run a quick errand before we meet for lunch.”
“She spent the entire Saturday morning running errands, including a trip to the dry cleaners and the bank.”
“The protagonist's simple errand to deliver a letter soon evolves into a complex journey that forces him to confront his past and the changing landscape of his hometown.”
Commonly used with the verb 'run' ('to run an errand').
“Clancy, 36, has admitted she killed her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — at the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023 while her husband was out running errands.”
From Middle English erande, erende, from Old English ǣrende, from Proto-West Germanic *ārundī (“message, errand”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.