Task Meaning
/tɑːsk/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounA piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
nounAny piece of work done.
Sentence Examples
You may as well do the task now.
He is equal to the task.
The teacher assigned a different task to each of the children.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The manager assigned us a difficult ____ that needed to be finished by the end of the day.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Cleaning the entire house after the big party was a very difficult ____ that took us several long hours today.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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."
— 2013 July 19, Ian Sample, “Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 34:
"[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"
— 2002 April 30, “Zeno’s Paradoxes”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"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."
— 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
"Art thou the Collector of the Kings taske? […] Thou haſt thy taske money for all that be heere, […]"
— 1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act I:
"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."
— 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]:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The manager assigned us a difficult ____ that needed to be finished by the end of the day.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Cleaning the entire house after the big party was a very difficult ____ that took us several long hours today.