task
//tɑːsk//
formalForms
- Plural
- tasks
- present (v1)
- task
- past (v2)
- tasked
- past participle (v3)
- tasked
- present participle
- tasking
- 3rd person singular
- tasks
Definitions
1.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.
2.Any piece of work done.
- This task took three hours.
- Any task may become painful.
3.A single action undertaken by a given agent.
- This task took three hours.
- Any task may become painful.
4.A difficult or tedious undertaking.
- This task took three hours.
- Any task may become painful.
1.To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax
- He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
2.To charge, as with a fault.
- Too impudent to task me with those errors.
3.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.
- By 1966 the building was considered so unsafe that the Royal Engineers were tasked with demolishing it.
Frequency
Overall
Common· #1164
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Common
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Etymology
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 taxō (“to censure; to charge”).
Doublet of tax.