delegate

Pluraldelegates

Formsdelegates, delegating, delegated

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A person given authority to act or speak on behalf of another; a deputy.

   The union sent a single delegate to negotiate with management.

   As the family's delegate, he signed the contract on their behalf.

   Similarrepresentative, deputy, envoy, proxy, agent

   Note

   Behind the word is Latin dēlēgō, "to send, assign": a delegate is, at root, someone sent with a charge. It reached English through Old French and Middle English delegat, and it shares its Latin family with legate, the envoy's title. That origin explains why every noun sense keeps the idea of authority received from someone else rather than held in one's own right.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who attends a conference or convention as a representative of a group.

   Each delegate at the summit represented a different country.

   Hundreds of delegates filled the hall for the opening session.

   Similarrepresentative, envoy

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To assign a task or responsibility to someone else, especially a person who works under you.

   Effective leaders delegate routine duties so they can focus on strategy.

   He delegated the budget review to his deputy.

   Similarassign, entrust, hand, pass, devolve

   Note

   Here the task is the object and the recipient follows to: delegate the budget review to a deputy. The passive is common because it puts the burden first. Simon Jenkins wrote in 2020 that the war on Covid-19 "was delegated to the health secretary." In this construction, to marks who receives the job, not the purpose it serves.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To pass tasks and responsibilities on to others, especially people who work under you.

   New managers often struggle to delegate effectively.

   Leaders who refuse to delegate quickly burn out.

   Note

   Used with no object, the verb names a working habit rather than a single act: she delegates well, he never delegates. It invites adverbs of judgment such as effectively, poorly or wisely. Jennifer Lees-Marshment, for example, writes that New Zealand's John Key "was perceived to delegate effectively." When the task itself needs naming, the sentence shifts to the transitive use.

5. 5
   nounUScountable

   A representative serving in certain US legislative bodies, such as a state house of delegates.

   The delegate from the western district introduced a bill on water rights.

   Each county sends a delegate to the state house.

   Similarrepresentative, legislator, lawmaker

   Note

   A title rather than a description here. In several US states, notably Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, members of the lower chamber are called delegates. Elsewhere the same seat would belong to a representative or an assembly member. Before a name it works as a title, so it is capitalized (Delegate Smith). In general reference it stays lowercase.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A member of a legislature who may take part in proceedings but holds no voting power.

   The territory's delegate addressed the assembly but had no vote in the final count.

   Each territory sends a single delegate who lacks voting power.

   Note

   Unlike the state legislator's title, this delegate sits without a vote. In the US Congress the term names members for territories and the District of Columbia. They can serve on committees and join debate but cannot vote on final passage. Apartheid-era South Africa had a house of delegates that likewise lacked any real voting power.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   In programming, a variable that stores a reference to a method with a particular signature, much like a function pointer.

   The event handler is registered through a delegate that matches the method's signature.

   In C#, a delegate can point to any method whose parameters match its definition.

   Note

   Programmers borrowed the word because the object stands in for a method: you call the delegate, and it calls the method it holds. Trey Nash's Accelerated C# 2010 describes C# encapsulating callbacks "into callable objects called delegates." The signature is what sets it apart from a raw function pointer. A delegate accepts only methods whose parameters and return type match, which makes it type-safe.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   In networking, to hand over authority for a subdomain so that another party can manage it and create further subdomains.

   Administrators delegate a subdomain by pointing its nameserver records to a third party.

   The registrar delegated the zone to the customer's own DNS servers.

   Note

   Network administrators use the word for a handover in the Domain Name System. The owner of a domain points a subdomain's nameserver records at another party's servers. That party then manages the records and can create further subdomains beneath it. What changes hands is authority over the zone, while the name itself still sits under the parent domain.

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