task
A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
Noun
- A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
- daily task
- monotonous task
- regular task
- Any piece of work done.
- carry out a task
- complete a task
- 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...
- A single action undertaken by a given agent.
- [T]here is a well-defined run in which the stages of Atalanta’s run are punctuated by finite rests, arguably showing the possibility of completing an infinite series of finite tasks in a finite time - 2002 April 30,...
- A difficult or tedious undertaking.
- 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...
- An objective.
- A process or execution of a program.
- The user killed the frozen task.
- A tax or charge.
- Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […] - 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act I:
Origin
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.
Forms
Synonyms
Derived
attask call to task eigentask hypertask intertask intratask metatask microtask monotask multitasking on task outtask overtask pretask retask Sally-Anne task Sternberg task subtask supertask take to task taskable taskbar taskboard task control
Noun alt of, alternative
- Alternative form of taisch.
Verb
- 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.
- 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. -...
- There task thy maids, and exercise the loom. - 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...
- 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. - 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.:...
- To charge, as with a fault.
- Too impudent to task me with those errors. - c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC,...