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task.

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

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/tɑːsk/Received-Pronunciation/task/Northern-England, Scotland/tæsk/General-American

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

    countable
    daily task, monotonous task, regular task, parental task
    The employee refused to complete the assignment, arguing that it was not one of the tasks listed in her job description.

  2. A piece of work done as part of one’s duties. A state of diligence in work on a task.

    uncountable
    I put him to task on the chores.

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

    countable
    carry out a task
    complete a task

  4. A piece of work done as part of one’s duties. A single action undertaken by a given agent.

    countable
    Each member of the team completed tasks in service of the goal.

  5. A piece of work done as part of one’s duties. A difficult or tedious undertaking; a substantial project.

    countable
    Getting him to change his behavior will be quite a task for you.
    I'm currently working on the task she gave me, alphabetizing all of those print files.

  6. A piece of work done as part of one’s duties. An objective or duty.

    countable
    Your task is the elimination of the termites.

  7. A piece of work done as part of one’s duties. A process or execution of a program.

    countable
    The user killed the frozen task.

  8. State of being subject to reprimands.

    uncountable
    call to task, take to task
    I will put him to task for what he's done.

  9. A tax or charge.

    countable · obsolete
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/tɑːsk/Received-Pronunciation/task/Northern-England, Scotland/tæsk/General-American

  1. To assign a task to; to impose a task on.

    transitive
    On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.

  2. To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax

    transitive

  3. To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax To institute a tax on.

    obsolete · transitive

  4. To charge, as with a fault.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

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.

noun

  1. Alternative form of taisch.

    alt-of · alternative
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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.