means A long, purposeful journey or search undertaken to achieve or find something difficult.

from From Latin 'quaerere,' to seek or ask, by way of the past participle 'quaesita' (a thing sought). It reached English through Old French 'queste' in the medieval period, when it meant the chivalric pursuit of something hard-won — a knight's search for a relic, a grail, a beast. The same Latin root quietly seeded 'question,' 'inquire,' 'request,' and 'conquest' — all of them, at heart, forms of seeking.