mission creep

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

mission creep (uncountable)

1. (politics, military, idiomatic) Gradual unplanned expansion of the objectives, scope, and/or cost of a project, especially a military mission.
   • 1994 September 19, Mark Thompson, “Haiti: The Past As Prelude”, in Time:

     Initially presented as a purely humanitarian mission, Operation Restore Hope gradually shifted from feeding Somalis to fighting them. Unaware of the "mission creep," the public was outraged when 18 U.S. soldiers died in an October 1993 fire fight.

   • 1995 October 23, Elaine Sciolino, “One-Year Limit on U.S. Troops in Bosnia Now an 'Estimate'”, in New York Times, retrieved 27 May 2011:

     General John Shalikashvili . . . said it was important to set a target date of one year and then bring the troops home, because "in the absence of that, you find yourself staying there, and that's how very often mission creep comes in."

   • 2011 March 13, Ramesh Thakur, “Acting responsibly to protect Libyans”, in Toronto Star, retrieved 27 May 2011:

     The risks of mission creep and a deepening quagmire leading to nation-building would arise only if ownership of the uprising was appropriated from the Libyans by the West, as would happen with ground troops.

   • 2020 May 18, Adam Ragusea, 5:02 from the start, in The delights and problems of watching Molto Mario‎^[1], archived from the original on 26 July 2024:

     A good stand-and-stir cooking show is to the Food Network as the music video is to MTV: ancient relics of both institutions' respective original purposes, before mission creep led them to trashy reality competition programming — apparently the entropic end-stage of all TV.

Translations

unplanned change of a mission

• Georgian: ამოცანის შეცვლა (amocanis šecvla)

References

• “mission creep”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• micropenises