Other forms: tasks, tasked, tasking
A task is one piece of work that needs doing. A simple task, a list of tasks, the task fell to her.
It is smaller than a job and more specific than work — a job contains many tasks. In project management, tasks are the units a plan is broken into. As a verb, to task somebody with something is formal and means to assign it: he was tasked with finding a replacement. Note task force, a group formed for one purpose; taskmaster, meaning a demanding boss; and take somebody to task, which means to criticise them for something.
1nountaskOne piece of work that needs doing.
“The whole task took about twenty minutes.”
synonyms: job, chore, assignment
2verbgiveTo give somebody a job to do.
“She was tasked with rewriting the entire manual.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
task is a piece of work.
Medieval Latin tasca is an altered form of taxa, a tax — the same word as task's cousin taxation. A task was originally an obligation imposed on you, which is why it still sounds like something set rather than chosen.
Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g-
Latin
taxō — to censure; to charge
Medieval Latin
tasca
fro-nor
tasque
Middle English
taske — task, tax
English, today
task
From Middle English taske (“task, tax”), from fro-nor tasque, (compare Old French variant tasche), from Medieval Latin tasca, alteration of taxa, from Latin taxō (“to censure; to charge”). a doublet of tax.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA