task
Americannoun
-
tasks
plural
-
a definite piece of work assigned to, falling to, or expected of a person; duty.
- Synonyms:
- assignment, job
-
any piece of work.
- Synonyms:
- assignment, job
-
a matter of considerable labor or difficulty.
-
Obsolete. a tax or impost.
verb (used with object)
-
tasks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
tasked,
past participle, past
-
tasking
present participle
-
to subject to severe or excessive labor or exertion; put a strain upon (powers, resources, etc.).
-
to impose a task on.
-
Obsolete. to tax.
adjective
idioms
noun
-
a specific piece of work required to be done as a duty or chore
-
an unpleasant or difficult job or duty
-
any piece of work
-
to criticize or reprove
verb
-
to assign a task to
-
to subject to severe strain; tax
Synonym Usage
Task, chore, job, assignment refer to a definite and specific instance or act of work. Task and chore and, to a lesser extent, job often imply work that is tiresome, arduous, or otherwise unpleasant. Task usually refers to a clearly defined piece of work, sometimes of short or limited duration, assigned to or expected of a person: the task of pacifying angry customers; a difficult, time-consuming task. A chore is a minor task, usually one of several performed as part of a routine, as in farming, and often more tedious than difficult: the daily chore of taking out the garbage; early morning chores of feeding the livestock. Job is the most general of these terms, referring to almost any work or responsibility, including a person's means of earning a living: the job of washing the windows; a well-paying job in advertising. Assignment refers to a specific task allocated to a person by someone in a position of authority: a homework assignment; a reporter's assignment to cover international news.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
tasksimple
-
taskssimple
-
have taskedperfect
-
has taskedperfect
-
am taskingprogressive
-
are taskingprogressive
-
is taskingprogressive
-
have been taskingperfect progressive
-
has been taskingperfect progressive
Past
-
taskedsimple
-
had taskedperfect
-
was taskingprogressive
-
were taskingprogressive
-
had been taskingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of task
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English noun, from Medieval Latin tasca, variant of taxa tax ( def. )
Explanation
A task can be big or small, easy or really hard — but it's never more than a job that needs to get done. Chop chop! There's a task that needs completing, and you're just the person for the job. If you're smart though, you'll figure out a way to task someone else with it, or assign it elsewhere. Task comes to us all the way from the Latin word taxare, which in its earliest days meant "to impose a tax on." So much like the filling out of your tax forms, most tasks are considered chores.
Vocabulary lists containing task
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Keystone Exams: English Composition Glossary
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Beowulf vocabulary
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Consider the seemingly simple task called “breakpack”—removing items from cardboard boxes to send out individually.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
Their task gets even harder if they make it through to round two, with potential opponents Iceland proving to be difficult to break down in their matches against England this year.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Vance -- who is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 -- was named by Trump to head an anti-fraud task force earlier this year.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
Though, to be fair to his toddler, keeping track of his parents is a much harder task at times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
The task was endless, and I needed to leave!
From "Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat" by Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth
But businesses grappling with mounting costs as more employees experimented with artificial intelligence realized they didn’t always need the most advanced options for most tasks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
Palantir’s operational layer will become “increasingly important,” she said, as AI applications move to becoming agentic systems that can work autonomously across several tasks.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
Manus is an agent tool that can carry out real-world tasks for users -- currently a hot sector in global tech, with AI labs racing to release personal assistants.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
The resulting protein may function as an enzyme, provide structural support, transport molecules, or perform countless other cellular tasks.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 2026
Once a clock has started, it performs its tasks automatically, but it cannot regulate itself.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Once the fire was extinguished, Lineage was tasked with removing the 89 million pounds of meat and food stored inside as fast as possible before it spoiled in the scorching summer heat.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
ORR is the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency traditionally tasked with the care of unaccompanied minor migrants.
From Barron's ● Oct. 4, 2026
The people tasked with the job of finding a usable vein and securing an IV are not phlebotomists with specialized training or nurses.
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026
He tasked Hocherman with developing a U.S.-made luxury game.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
At Sidley & Austin, I was part of the Chicago office’s recruiting team, tasked with interviewing Harvard Law School students for summer-associate jobs.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
The “Ted Lasso” writers aren’t entirely unaware of the most obvious concerns that come with tasking Ted with wrangling a team of disparate female personalities.
From Salon ● Sep. 10, 2026
The U.S. military is using nonstandard contracts and tasking defense contractors to design new weapons from scratch to cut years off production times and hundreds of millions of dollars off their cost.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
The new material revealed MI5 had greater and earlier knowledge of Stakeknife than detectives had previously been told, including that MI5 had been involved in tasking him.
From BBC ● Jan. 25, 2026
Manchester United confirmed Michael Carrick as interim manager until the end of the season on Tuesday, tasking him with leading the Red Devils back into the Champions League.
From Barron's ● Jan. 13, 2026
And these "vital" themes awake our prejudices at the cost of a minimum—if not always, as when Miss Corelli guides us, with a positively negligible— tasking of our mental faculties.
From The Certain Hour by James Branch Cabell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
