missive

noun

1. (formal)A written message; a letter, note or memo.

   “[Y]ou / Did pocket vp my Letters: and with taunts / Did gibe my Miſive out of audience.”

   “The juvenile missives from his unmistakably phallic Twitter avatar came days after one of his rockets launched NASA’s first antiasteroid planetary-defense test[…]”

   “The Madonna letters, which are interspersed with more personal missives in this curious epistolary memoir, accumulate into a rap about the downsides of celebrity - the problems of ageing, of invaded privacy, of becoming vain and impetuously adopting children from other continents.”

   “"Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it"; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat.”

2. (in-plural)Letters sent between two parties in which one makes an offer and the other accepts it.
3. (obsolete)One who is sent; a messenger.

   “Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it came missives from the King, who all hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor,’ by which title these Weird Sisters saluted me and referred me to the coming on of time with ‘Hail king that shalt be.’”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Specially sent; intended or prepared to be sent.

   “a letter missive”

   “Delivery of the Letters Missive”

2. (not-comparable, obsolete)Serving as a missile; intended to be thrown.

   “In vain with Darts a diſtant War they try, / Short, and more ſhort the miſſive weapons fly.”