task

UK/tɑːsk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/task/

task noun: a piece of work done as part of one’s duties. Also the alternative form of taisch.

Noun

task (plural tasks)

(countable) A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
- 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.
Synonyms:

assignment, chore, job
1. (uncountable) A state of diligence in work on a task.
  - I put him to task on the chores.
2. (countable) Any piece of work done.
  - carry out a task
  - complete a task
3. (countable) A single action undertaken by a given agent.
  - Each member of the team completed tasks in service of the goal.
  - [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 time2002 April 30, “Zeno’s Paradoxes”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. (countable) A difficult or tedious undertaking; a substantial project.
  - 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.
5. (countable) An objective or duty.
  - Your task is the elimination of the termites.
6. (countable) A process or execution of a program.
  - The user killed the frozen task.
(uncountable) State of being subject to reprimands.
- call to task, take to task
- I will put him to task for what he's done.
Synonyms:

hot seat
(countable, obsolete) A tax or charge.
- 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
Synonyms:

levy

Verb

task (third-person singular simple present tasks, present participle tasking, simple past and past participle tasked)

(transitive) To assign a task to; to impose a task on.
- On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.
- 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...
(transitive) To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax
- He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.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
1. (obsolete, transitive) To institute a tax on.
(transitive) To charge, as with a fault.
- Too impudent to task me with those errors.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

Also used as

task is also the alternative form of taisch.

task meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu

task in Hindi

piece of work done as part of one’s duties: कार्य kārya, काम kām

task in Marathi

piece of work done as part of one’s duties: कार्य kārya

task in Urdu

piece of work done as part of one’s duties: کام kām

task in Telugu

టాస్క్

More languagesFewer languages

task in Tagalog: abyad
task in Arabic: مُهِمَّة muhimma, وَظِيفَة waẓīfa, عَمَل ʕamal, هَدَف hadaf
task in Thai: งาน ngaan
task in Vietnamese: nhiệm vụ, mục tiêu, mục đích

Examples of task in a sentence

Solving the economy is an enormous task for the ministry.
Can she hold us to task for that?
I hope somebody has brought him to task by now.
But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs.2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
There task thy maids, and exercise the loom.a. 1701 (date written), John Dryden, “The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache. From the Sixth Book of the Iliad.”, in The Miscellaneous...
By 1966 the building was considered so unsafe that the Royal Engineers were tasked with demolishing it.2021 May 19, “Network News: HS2 unearths 900 years of history in Buckinghamshire”, in RAIL, number 931, page 23:

All 40 example sentences with task

Synonyms of task

All synonyms of task

Forms of task

Noun
plural	tasks
Verb
third-person singular present	tasks
present participle	tasking
past participle	tasked
past	tasked

Past tense of task: tasked

Plural of task: tasks

Origin of task

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.

Phrases with task

Words that rhyme with task

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about task

What does task mean?: Task means a piece of work done as part of one’s duties.
What is task in Hindi?: Task in Hindi is कार्य (kārya), काम (kām). See Task meaning in Hindi.
How do you use task in a sentence?: Solving the economy is an enormous task for the ministry.
What part of speech is task?: Task can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce task?: Task is pronounced /tɑːsk/ (UK).
What is the plural of task?: The plural of task is tasks.

Words near task in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: task (page history and authors); task (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-task.ogg.

Cite this entry: “task.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/task. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.