tasking

Pluraltaskings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of task.

   The manager is tasking her team with the year-end audit.

   Tasking volunteers with the cleanup took most of the morning.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb behind this form is transitive, so it always takes an object: you are tasking someone, usually with something, as in tasking a team with an audit. The verb can also mean burdening someone to excess, much as taxing does, or charging someone with a fault. Keep the gerund apart from the noun for an assignment, which is countable and has a plural, taskings.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An assigned item of work; a job handed to a person or group to carry out.

   The commander issued a fresh tasking to the reconnaissance team.

   Several taskings arrived overnight from headquarters.

   Similarassignment, task, mission, order

   Note

   Military and police jargon for a job handed down the chain of command. It is a countable noun that collects verbs of handing over: officers receive taskings, and a superior gives several taskings at once. Perry M. Smith and Daniel M. Gerstein's Assignment: Pentagon (2007) shows how they arrive, from a boss who grabs you in the hall or an official who interrupts your briefing. Outside those settings, plain task reads more naturally.

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