mandato

There is no -at- inside this word, and the ending is a trap. Esperanto has a passive participle suffix -at-, so a learner who has just learned it reads mand-at-o and starts looking for a verb mandi. There is none. Mandato is a single Latin root borrowed whole, exactly like traktato, kandidato, soldato and salato, all of which end in the same three letters and none of which contains a participle. The rule of thumb: if removing the supposed -at- leaves you with something that is not a verb root in its own right, you are looking at a borrowing, not a build. Remove it here and you get mand-, which means nothing.

Three senses, all live. A mandato is the authority an electorate gives a representative, so lia mandato daŭras kvar jarojn is his term of office. It is also the legal instrument that authorises an action - an arrest warrant, a search warrant, a payment order. And in the historical sense it is a League of Nations mandate, a territory one state administered on behalf of another, which is how the word reached most European newspapers in the 1920s. Esperanto carries all three without strain.

Against the neighbours. Komisii is the verb for entrusting somebody with a task, and komisio is the commission itself - closer to a job than to an authority. Misio is a mission in the sense of a purpose or a sent body of people. Rajto is a right you hold. A mandato is narrower than any of them: it is delegated power, held on someone else's behalf and returnable. Mandatulo is the person holding it, and mandata periodo the span it runs for.