Etimology
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.
noun
task (plural tasks)
A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
Any piece of work done.
A single action undertaken by a given agent.
A difficult or tedious undertaking.
An objective.
(computing) A process or execution of a program.
(obsolete) A tax or charge.
Examples
The employee refused to complete the assignment, arguing that it was not one of the tasks listed in her job description.
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.
[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
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.
The user killed the frozen task.
Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […]
Related words
synonyms
(piece of work): chore, job
(difficult undertaking): undertaking
(objective): objective, goal
(process): process
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.
(transitive) To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax
(transitive) To charge, as with a fault.
Examples
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.
By 1966 the building was considered so unsafe that the Royal Engineers were tasked with demolishing it.
He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
Too impudent to task me with those errors.
noun
task
Alternative form of taisch