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:
Mr. Warsh is pressing ahead with an aggressive reform agenda, as he made clear on Friday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
The president did not simply abandon his tariff agenda, though, instead identifying new ways to tariff under existing federal trade law.
From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2026
"Things have been moving very rapidly with respect to geopolitical challenges," Finance Minister Daði Már Kristófersson tells the BBC, pushing Iceland's place in the world "up the agenda".
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
How potential returnees are to be treated was high on the agenda when the DP World Tour's tournament committee met on Tuesday afternoon.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
There was no written agenda, so there was no way for her and Rowan to know what came next, and Scythe Faraday only explained things as they happened.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
The bizarre geography lesson appeared in student agendas distributed at Farnsley Middle School, part of Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville.
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
Describing the closure as "cruel", Varney said the products the company sells are a luxury item that falls off consumers' agendas once cost pressures strike, and people stick to the essentials.
From BBC ● May 13, 2026
Three overlapping reasons appear to have converged in Adams’s mind and provided decisive direction to a foreign policy that, until then, had been vacillating between the incompatible agendas of the Federalists and the Republicans.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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
But a principal agendum of the conference is the limitation of submarines.
From Time Magazine Archive
Locus ad agendum amplissimus: A place very honourable to plead in.
From The Comic Latin Grammar A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue by John Leech
Their main agendum was to pronounce their complete independence of men.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 by Sir Owen Seaman
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.
