Middle English: from Old French mes ‘portion of food’, from late Latin missum ‘something put on the table’, past participle of mittere ‘send, put’. The original sense was ‘a serving of (semi-liquid) food’, later ‘liquid food for an animal’; this gave rise (early 19th century) to the senses ‘unappetizing concoction’ and ‘predicament’, on which sense 1 is based. In late Middle English the term also denoted any of the small groups into which the company at a banquet was divided (who were served from the same dishes); hence, ‘a group who regularly eat together’ (recorded in military use from the mid 16th century)