Task

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /tɑːsk/

Definitions

1. A specific piece of work or duty that needs to be completed within a certain time frame
2. A clearly defined duty or piece of work that an individual is required to accomplish within an established time limit
3. A defined piece of work or assignment requiring an individual to perform certain duties within a designated timeframe

Etymology: The word "task" began as a tax. Its Medieval Latin ancestor "tasca" was an alteration of "taxa," the feminine form of the past participle of Latin "taxare," meaning to assess, charge, or rate, and the same Latin verb gave English "tax." Medieval Latin "tasca" carried the sense of a fixed payment, and in Old Northern French it became "tasque," a charge or levy assigned to someone. Over time the idea of a fixed amount owed shifted from money to labour. A tax could be a set quantity of work a person was required to finish, and that is the sense English took on in Middle English, where "taske" meant both a tax and an assigned amount of work. The financial meaning faded while the work sense survived, so the modern word for a job to be done kept the memory of an obligation imposed from above. Because "task" and "tax" descend from the same source, they are doublets: two English words that entered the language by different routes but share one origin, one having been borrowed from French and the other from Latin.

Synonyms: job, duty, assignment, responsibility, chore

Antonyms: leisure, idleness, vacation, break, rest