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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

delegate.

A person authorized to act as representative for another; a deputy.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈdɛlɪɡət/Received-Pronunciation/ˈdɛlɪɡət/Canada, General-American/ˈdɛləɡət/Canada, General-American/ˈdeləɡət/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. A person authorized to act as representative for another; a deputy.

  2. A representative at a conference, etc.

  3. An appointed representative in some legislative bodies.

    US
  4. A type of variable storing a reference to a method with a particular signature, analogous to a function pointer.

  5. A member of a governmental legislature who lacks voting power.

    The house of delegates in apartheid-era South Africa lacked any real voting power.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English delegat, from Old French delegat, from Latin dēlēgātus substantivized from the nominative masculine singular of dēlēgātus, the perfect passive participle of dēlēgō (“to send, assign, delegate”), see -ate (noun-forming suffix). See also legate.

verb/ˈdɛlɪˌɡeɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈdɛlɪˌɡeɪt/Canada, General-American/ˈdɛləˌɡeɪt/Canada, General-American/ˈdeləˌɡæɪt/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. To commit tasks and responsibilities to others, especially subordinates.

    intransitive
  2. To commit (a task or responsibility) to someone, especially a subordinate.

    transitive
  3. To appoint (someone) as one's representative.

    transitive
  4. (of a subdomain) To give away authority over a subdomain; to allow someone else to create sub-subdomains of a subdomain of one's own.

    Internet · transitive
Where this word comes from

From the above noun by metanalysis or directly borrowed from Latin dēlēgātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.

adj
  1. delegated

    not-comparable · obsolete · participle · past
  2. Acting as a delegate, delegated; of, pertaining to a delegate

    adjective · not-comparable · obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English delegat(e) (“delegated”, used as a past participle and adjective), used as the past participle of delegate up until Early Modern English, see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.