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Task vs Travail - What's the difference?

task | travail | Related terms |

Task is a related term of travail.


As nouns the difference between task and travail

is that task is a piece of work done as part of one’s duties while travail is (archaic) arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.

As verbs the difference between task and travail

is that task is to assign a task to, or impose a task on while travail is to toil.

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

    * * *

    travail

    English

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • (archaic) Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.
  • * Hooker
  • As everything of price, so this doth require travail .
  • *, II.20:
  • *:Travell and pleasure, most unlike in nature, are notwithstanding followed together by a kind of I wot not what natural conjunction.
  • * 1936 , (Djuna Barnes), Nightwood , Faber & Faber 2007, p. 38:
  • He had thought of making a destiny for himself, through laborious and untiring travail .
  • Specifically, the labor of childbirth.
  • (obsolete, countable) An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
  • (obsolete) The eclipse of a celestial object.
  • References

    *

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To toil.
  • * Latimer
  • slothful persons which will not travail for their livings
  • To go through the labor of childbirth.
  • * 1526 , William Tyndale, trans. Bible , John XIV:
  • A woman when she traveyleth hath sorowe, be cause her houre is come: but as sone as she is delivered off her chylde she remembreth no moare her anguysshe, for ioye that a man is borne in to the worlde.