Other forms: assignments
An assignment is a piece of work somebody gives you to do, with a deadline attached. The essay due Friday, three chapters to read by Monday, a reporter sent to Cairo for a month.
At school and university it is the word for homework that counts: you are set an assignment, you hand it in, you get it back marked. At work it is a job you have been handed, and a soldier or a journalist is 'on assignment' when posted somewhere to do one. The same noun covers the giving out as well as the thing given: the assignment of rooms, the assignment of blame. Lawyers use it for handing over a right or a property, as in the assignment of a lease to a new tenant. The verb underneath all of it is assign, and you assign a task TO someone.
1nounassignmentA piece of work given to a student or a worker to finish by a set time.~21%
“The assignment is due on Friday at midnight.”
2nounjobA job or posting that somebody is sent away to do.~37%
“He is in Cairo on assignment for a Dutch newspaper.”
3nounactThe act of giving a task, a role or a place to someone.~25%
“The assignment of desks took the whole first morning.”
4nounhandingThe formal handing over of a right or a piece of property to another person.~17%
“The lease allows the assignment of the flat to a family member.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 24 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
assignment is a task.
Assignment arrived as assignement, taken straight from Old French and carried through Middle English almost unchanged. It is built on assign, so the noun is either the act of assigning or the thing assigned. English still makes nouns this way: agreement, settlement, payment.
Old French
assignement
Middle English
assignement
English, today
assignment
From Middle English assignement, from Old French assignement. by surface analysis, assign + -ment.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA