agenda
Americannoun
noun
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Also called: agendum. (functioning as singular) a schedule or list of items to be attended to
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Also called: agendas. agendums. (functioning as plural) matters to be attended to, as at a meeting of a committee
Usage
Agenda, “things to be done,” is the plural of the Latin gerund agendum and is used today in the sense “a plan or list of matters to be acted upon.” In that sense it is treated as a singular noun; its plural is usually agendas: The agenda is ready for distribution. The agendas of last year's meetings are printed in the official minutes. The singular agendum, meaning “an item on an agenda,” is rare.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of agenda
First recorded in 1745–55; from Latin, plural of agendum “that which is to be done,” gerund of agere “to do, drive”; the plural originally carried a collective sense denoting the various items to be transacted
Explanation
An agenda is a list of things to do. If you're going to attend a meeting with a long agenda, you'll want to take your coffee mug along. The word agenda is the plural for of the Latin word agendum, which literally means "something to be done." The noun retains this meaning because an agenda is a plan — organized by time — of events or things to do. You might have a meeting, a lunch date, and a doctor's appointment on your agenda for the day. And when you run for office, you better have a political agenda — or a plan for what you want to get done if elected.
Vocabulary lists containing agenda
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I've Been to the Mountaintop" (1968)
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President Trump's Second State of the Union Address (2019)
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Legend
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Once elevated to his new posts, Salisbury took charge of carrying out the second Trump administration’s agenda for HSI, personally issuing staffing directives, reassignments and promotions, current and former agency officials told ProPublica.
From Salon ● Aug. 15, 2026
Many Paxton-supported policies, according to Talarico, advance that agenda.
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
These issues will be high on the agenda when researchers from across the region meet in Abuja later this year to review the West African Vulture Conservation Action Plan, which was drafted in 2022.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
The nonprofit group uses private donors to give City Hall a pot of money to help finance its agenda.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
This statement was too radical for some of the women at the meeting, who wanted nothing to do with the women’s rights agenda.
From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling
The agendas also contained a distorted periodic table, unreadable phases of the moon and other garbled educational material that parents suspect may have been created using artificial intelligence.
From Salon ● Aug. 15, 2026
Ricci went viral for taking viewers behind the closed doors of his family’s quarterly money meetings, all the way down to agendas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
Whatever agendas they may personally espouse, these writers are too alert to the messiness of history and human nature to be rigidly ideological in their work.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026
But the alliance soon unravelled as they pursued divergent political agendas.
From BBC ● May 11, 2026
Haints seemed to have their own minds and agendas, despite what Aunt Rose might think.
From "Ophie's Ghosts" by Justina Ireland
But a principal agendum of the conference is the limitation of submarines.
From Time Magazine Archive
The next most important agendum was the division of reparations so far received, a matter complicated by profits derived from the Ruhr occupation, seizures made, deliveries in kind received, etc.
From Time Magazine Archive
Principal agendum of the pages standing at the rostrum steps was to lift the train of each ascending delegate with combined dexterity, good timing and discretion.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Accusative of the Gerund is used only with Prepositions, chiefly ad and in to denote purpose; as,— homō ad agendum nātus est, man is born for action.
From New Latin Grammar by Charles E. (Charles Edwin) Bennett
Others are finer still Caesar's energy is rivalled by the line— "Nil actum credens dum quid superesset agendum."
From The History of Roman Literature From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius by Charles Thomas Cruttwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
