# task
## English
### Etymology 1

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.

#### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) enPR: täsk, IPA: /tɑːsk/
* (Northern England, Scotland) IPA: /task/
* (General American) enPR: tăsk, IPA: /tæsk/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -æsk, -ɑːsk

#### Noun

task (plural tasks)
* A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
    The employee refused to complete the assignment, arguing that it was not one of the tasks listed in her job description.
* Any piece of work done.
** 2013 July 19, Ian Sample, “Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 34: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.
* A single action undertaken by a given agent.
** 2002 April 30, “Zeno’s Paradoxes”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:[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
* A difficult or tedious undertaking.
** 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848: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.
* An objective.
* (computing) A process or execution of a program.
    The user killed the frozen task.
* (obsolete) A tax or charge.
** 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], Act I:Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […]

##### Synonyms

* (piece of work): chore, job
* (difficult undertaking): undertaking
* (objective): objective, goal
* (process): process

##### Derived terms

* call to task
* multitasking
* on task
* Sally-Anne task
* Sternberg task
* subtask
* supertask
* take to task
* taskable
* taskbar
* task control
* task-force
* task force
* taskless
* tasklet
* task manager
* taskmaster
* task-negative
* task-oriented
* task-positive
* task-specific

##### Collocations

* Adjectives often applied to "task": difficult, easy, simple, hard, tough, complex, not-so-easy, challenging, complicated, tricky, formidable, arduous, laborious, onerous, small, big, huge, enormous, tremendous, gigantic, mammoth, colossal, gargantuan, social, intellectual, theological, important, basic, trivial, unpleasant, demanding, pleasant, noble, painful, grim, responsible, rewarding, boring, ungrateful, delightful, glorious, agreeable, thankless.

##### Translations

Albanian: detyrë (sq) f
Arabic: مُهِمَّة f (muhimma)
Armenian: առաջադրանք (hy) (aṙaǰadrankʻ)
Azerbaijani: tapşırıq (az), vəzifə (az)
Bashkir: эш (eş)
Belarusian: зада́нне n (zadánnje), зада́ча (be) f (zadáča)
Bulgarian: ра́бота (bg) f (rábota), зада́ча (bg) f (zadáča)
Catalan: tasca (ca) f
Chinese:
Mandarin: 課題 / 课题 (zh) (kètí), 作業 / 作业 (zh) (zuòyè), 任務 / 任务 (zh) (rènwù)
Cornish: oberen f, rann ober f
Czech: úkol (cs) m, úloha (cs) f
Danish: opgave c, tjans c, job (da) n
Dutch: taak (nl) c, opgave (nl) f
Egyptian: (wpwt)
Esperanto: tasko (eo)
Finnish: tehtävä (fi), tekeminen (fi), homma (fi), puuha (fi), askare (fi)
French: tâche (fr) f
Galician: tarefa (gl) f, angueira f
Georgian: დავალება (davaleba), ამოცანა (amocana), საქმე (sakme)
German: Aufgabe (de) f, Pflicht (de) f
Gothic: 𐍄𐌰𐌿𐌹 n (taui)
Greek: δουλειά (el) f (douleiá), εργασία (el) (ergasía)
Hebrew: מְשִׂימָה (he) f (m'simá), מַטָּלָה (he) f (matalá)
Hindi: कार्य (hi) m (kārya)
Hungarian: feladat (hu)
Italian: compito (it) m, attività (it)
Japanese: 仕事 (ja) (しごと, shigoto), 課題 (ja) (かだい, kadai)
Korean: 일 (ko) (il), 과제(課題) (ko) (gwaje)
Kyrgyz: тапшырма (ky) (tapşırma)
Latin: pensum n
Latvian: uzdevums m
Lithuanian: užduotis f
Macedonian: задача f (zadača)
Maori: taumahi, tūmahi
Marathi: कार्य (kārya)
Middle English: taske
Nahuatl: tequiua
Norwegian:
Bokmål: oppgave (no) f
Nynorsk: oppgåve f
Persian: کار (fa) (kâr)
Polish: zadanie (pl) n
Portuguese: tarefa (pt) f, incumbência (pt) f, dever (pt) m
Romanian: sarcină (ro)
Russian: зада́ние (ru) n (zadánije), зада́ча (ru) f (zadáča), рабо́та (ru) f (rabóta)
Scottish Gaelic: gnìomh m
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: зада́так m
Roman: zadátak (sh) m
Slovak: úloha f
Slovene: naloga f
Spanish: tarea (es) f, quehacer (es) m, faena (es) f, tonga (es) f, tanda (es) f
Swedish: uppgift (sv) c
Tagalog: abyad (tl)
Turkish: görev (tr), vazife (tr), ödev (tr)
Ukrainian: завда́ння (uk) n (zavdánnja), зада́ча f (zadáča)
Uyghur: تاپشۇرۇق (tapshuruq), ۋەزىپە (wezipe)
Welsh: tasg (cy) f :
    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

#### 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.
    On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.
** 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]: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.
** a. 1701 (date written), John Dryden, “The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache. From the Sixth Book of the Iliad.”, in The Miscellaneous Works of John Dryden, […], volume IV, London: […] J[acob] and R[ichard] Tonson, […], published 1760, →OCLC:There task thy maids, and exercise the loom.
** 2021 May 19, “Network News: HS2 unearths 900 years of history in Buckinghamshire”, in RAIL, number 931, page 23:By 1966 the building was considered so unsafe that the Royal Engineers were tasked with demolishing it.
* (transitive) To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax
** 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
* (transitive) To charge, as with a fault.
** c. 1619–1621, John Fletcher, “The Island Princesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act III, scene iii:Too impudent to task me with those errors.

##### Derived terms

* multitask
* multi-task

##### Translations
### Etymology 2
#### Noun

task
* Alternative form of taisch

### Anagrams

* AKST, KTAS, Kast, askt, kast, kats, skat

## Swedish
### Noun

task c
* (colloquial) a dick (penis)

#### See also

* kuk

#### References

* task in Svensk ordbok (SO)
* task in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
* task in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
* Fula Ordboken