task

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   assign a task to

   I tasked you with looking after the children.

2. 2
   noun

   A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.

   daily task

3. 3
   noun

   Any piece of work done.

   carry out a task

4. 4
   noun

   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

5. 5
   noun

   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 synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.

6. 6
   noun

   A process or execution of a program.

   The user killed the frozen task.

7. 7
   noun

   A tax or charge.

   Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […]

8. 8
   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.

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.