task
See also: Task
English
Etymology 1
From Middle English taske (“task, tax”), from Old Northern French tasque, (compare Old French variant tasche), from Medieval Latin tasca, alteration of taxa, from Latin taxāre (“censure; charge”). Doublet of tax.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) enPR: täsk, IPA(key): /tɑːsk/
- (Northern England, Scotland) IPA(key): /task/
- (General American) enPR: tăsk, IPA(key): /tæsk/
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -æsk, -ɑːsk
Noun
task (plural tasks)
- A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
- The employee refused to complete the assignment, arguing that it was not one of the tasks listed in her job description.
- Any piece of work done.
- 2013 July 19, Ian Sample, “Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 34:
- Irregular bedtimes may disrupt healthy brain development in young children, according to a study of intelligence and sleeping habits. ¶ Going to bed at a different time each night affected girls more than boys, but both fared worse on mental tasks than children who had a set bedtime, researchers found.
- A single action undertaken by a given agent.
- 2002 April 30, “Zeno’s Paradoxes”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- A difficult or tedious undertaking.
- 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
- As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.
- An objective.
- (computing) A process or execution of a program.
- The user killed the frozen task.
- (obsolete) A tax or charge.
- 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], Act I:
- Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […]
Synonyms
- (piece of work): chore, job
- (difficult undertaking): undertaking
- (objective): objective, goal
- (process): process
Derived terms
Collocations
Collocations
- Adjectives often applied to "task": difficult, easy, simple, hard, tough, complex, not-so-easy, challenging, complicated, tricky, formidable, arduous, laborious, onerous, small, big, huge, enormous, tremendous, gigantic, mammoth, colossal, gargantuan, social, intellectual, theological, important, basic, trivial, unpleasant, demanding, pleasant, noble, painful, grim, responsible, rewarding, boring, ungrateful, delightful, glorious, agreeable, thankless.
Translations
piece of work done as part of one’s duties
|
difficult or tedious undertaking
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objective
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process or execution of a program
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Verb
task (third-person singular simple present tasks, present participle tasking, simple past and past participle tasked)
- (transitive) To assign a task to, or impose a task on.
- On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.
- 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
- All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come / To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, / To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride / On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task / Ariel and all his quality.
- a. 1701 (date written), John Dryden, “The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache. From the Sixth Book of the Iliad.”, in The Miscellaneous Works of John Dryden, […], volume IV, London: […] J[acob] and R[ichard] Tonson, […], published 1760, →OCLC:
- There task thy maids, and exercise the loom.
- 2021 May 19, “Network News: HS2 unearths 900 years of history in Buckinghamshire”, in RAIL, number 931, page 23:
- By 1966 the building was considered so unsafe that the Royal Engineers were tasked with demolishing it.
- (transitive) To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
- (transitive) To charge, as with a fault.
- c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act III, scene iii:
- Too impudent to task me with those errors.
Derived terms
Translations
assign a task to
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Etymology 2
Noun
task
- Alternative form of taisch
Anagrams
Swedish
Noun
task c
- (colloquial) a dick (penis)
Declension
Declension of task | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | Plural | |||
Indefinite | Definite | Indefinite | Definite | |
Nominative | task | tasken | taskar | taskarna |
Genitive | tasks | taskens | taskars | taskarnas |
See also
References
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *teh₂g- (touch)
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old Northern French
- English terms derived from Medieval Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English doublets
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/æsk
- Rhymes:English/æsk/1 syllable
- Rhymes:English/ɑːsk
- Rhymes:English/ɑːsk/1 syllable
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- en:Computing
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English nouns with unknown or uncertain plurals
- en:Directives
- Swedish lemmas
- Swedish nouns
- Swedish common-gender nouns
- Swedish colloquialisms