Task vs Painstaking - What's the difference?

Task is a related term of painstaking.

As nouns the difference between task and painstaking

is that task is a piece of work done as part of one’s duties while painstaking is the application of careful and attentive effort.

As a verb task

is to assign a task to, or impose a task on.

As an adjective painstaking is

carefully attentive to details; diligent in performing a process or procedure.

task

English

Noun

(en noun)

A piece of work done as part of one’s duties.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A new prescription , passage=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.}}

A difficult or tedious undertaking.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author= Ian Sample

, volume=189, issue=6, page=34, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains , passage=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.}}

An objective.

(computing) A process or execution of a program.

Usage notes

* Adjectives often applied to "task": difficult, easy, simple, hard, tough, complex, not-so-easy, challenging, complicated, tricky, formidable, arduous, laborious, onerous, small, big, huge, enormous, tremendous, gigantic, mammoth, colossal, gargantuan, social, intellectual, theological, important, basic, trivial, unpleasant, demanding, pleasant, noble, painful, grim, responsible, rewarding, boring, ungrateful, delightful, glorious, agreeable.

Synonyms

* (piece of work) chore * (difficult undertaking) undertaking * (objective) objective, goal * (process) process

Derived terms

* multitasking * subtask * task force * take to task * taskable * taskbody * tasklet * taskmaster

Verb

(en verb)

To assign a task to, or impose a task on.

On my first day in the office, I was tasked with sorting a pile of invoices.

* 1610 , , act 1 scene 2

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.

* Dryden

There task thy maids, and exercise the loom.

To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax.

To charge, as with a fault.

* Beaumont and Fletcher

Too impudent to task me with those errors.

Anagrams

* * *

painstaking
English

Adjective
(en adjective)
Carefully attentive to details; diligent in performing a process or procedure.

* Harris

All these painstaking men, considered together, may be said to have completed another species of criticism.

Synonyms
* See also * See also
Derived terms
* painstakingly, painstakingness
Noun

The application of careful and attentive effort.

*, II.10:

*:I esteeme Bocace'' his ''Decameron'', ''Rabelais'', and the kisses of ''John the second (if they may be placed under this title) worth the paines-taking to reade them.

* (Thomas Chalmers)

It is not by a flight of imagination that you gain the ascents of spiritual experience. It is by the toils and the watchings and the painstakings of a solid obedience.

* (Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham)

Behold what an abundant recompense attends the small processes of the earth, with the help of a little warm air; and what wealthy returns the industry of the husbandman and the florist is preparing from a few seeds and painstakings .