delegation
Pluraldelegations
- 1A group of delegates sent to represent a larger body or organization.
Like a handful of representatives carrying a whole crowd's voice into one room.
The trade delegation spent a week negotiating new export terms.
A delegation from the union presented their demands to management.
Similarmission, deputation, contingent
Note
Here the word names the people rather than the act of handing over. A delegation is the body that is sent, and each of its members is a delegate. It is usually identified by whom it speaks for, often with a national adjective, as in the American delegation. Its purpose can also identify it, as in a trade delegation.
- 2The act of assigning a task, duty, or authority to another person to carry out.
Like a head chef who hands each cook a station instead of preparing every dish alone.
Effective delegation requires trusting your team to make their own decisions.
His poor delegation meant he worked late every night on tasks others could have handled.
Note
The noun for handing something over, borrowed from Latin dēlēgātiō, from dēlēgō, with French délégation as a close relative. It usually takes of for what is handed over and to for who receives it. 'Borderer', writing in Railway Magazine in 1958, describes the delegation of powers to the Boards. Used uncountably it names a practice or skill; used countably it names a single handing-over.
- 3The transfer of the duty to perform an obligation from the original debtor to another party, who takes on its performance.
Like passing a chore you owe to a stand-in: the work changes hands, but the duty was first yours.
The court held that delegation of the performance did not release the debtor from liability.
By delegation, the contractor transferred its obligation to finish the building to another firm.
Note
Handing over the performance of a duty does not hand over the liability for it. Marco J. Jimenez's Contract Law (2016) puts it plainly: mere delegation imposes no duty on the delegate to perform. If the delegate performs, the duty is discharged; if not, it remains. The parties have names of their own: the delegator or obligor owes the duty, and the delegatee or delegate performs it.
- 4A method-dispatching technique that defines how lookup and inheritance work for self-referential calls between objects.
Like a receptionist who routes a question to the right specialist instead of answering it personally.
Prototype-based languages rely on delegation rather than class inheritance to reuse behavior.
The framework uses delegation so that an unhandled method call falls through to a backing object.
Note
A programmer's term that turns on where self points. When one object passes a method call to another, delegation keeps the self-reference bound to the original receiver. Any further self-calls therefore come back to the first object. That is what separates it from simple forwarding, where the receiving object answers as itself. It is also how prototype-based languages share behavior without classes.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin 'dēlēgātiō' (genitive 'dēlēgātiōnis'), from the verb 'dēlēgō'; compare French 'délégation'.