means An authoritative command or official order to do something, often one a leader claims to have received from voters or a higher power.

from From Latin mandatum, 'a command, commission,' the past participle of mandare, 'to entrust, to order.' The likely root is a vivid one: manus, 'hand,' joined with dare, 'to give' — so a mandate is literally something 'given into the hand,' a charge handed over for safekeeping or execution. It traveled into English through Old French mandat, and that same Latin mandatum gives us 'Maundy Thursday,' from Christ's mandatum to love one another.