Task vs Topic - What's the difference?
task | topic | Related terms |
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 difficult or tedious undertaking.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=
, volume=189, issue=6, page=34, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= An objective.
(computing) A process or execution of a program.
To assign a task to, or impose a task on.
* 1610 , , act 1 scene 2
* Dryden
To oppress with severe or excessive burdens; to tax.
To charge, as with a fault.
* Beaumont and Fletcher
(l)
Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (Internet) Discussion thread.
(obsolete) An argument or reason.
* Bishop Wilkins
(obsolete, medicine) An external local application or remedy, such as a plaster, a blister, etc.
As nouns the difference between task and topic
is that task is a piece of work done as part of one’s duties while topic is subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.As a verb task
is to assign a task to, or impose a task on.As an adjective topic is
topical.task
English
Noun
(en noun)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.}}
Ian Sample
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.}}
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) processDerived terms
* multitasking * subtask * task force * take to task * taskable * taskbody * tasklet * taskmasterVerb
(en verb)- 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.
- There task thy maids, and exercise the loom.
- Too impudent to task me with those errors.
Anagrams
* * *topic
English
(wikipedia topic)Alternative forms
* topick (obsolete)Adjective
Noun
(en noun)The machine of a new soul, passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}
- contumacious persons, who are not to be fixed by any principles, whom no topics can work upon
- (Wiseman)