undertaking

Pluralundertakings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A business, work, or project that a person takes on or attempts to carry out.

   Restoring the cathedral became the largest undertaking of his career.

   Such undertakings often take years and considerable funding.

   Similarventure, enterprise, project, endeavor, pursuit

   Note

   Here the word names the work itself, and it scales up easily. Stephen Roberts uses it for the building of Chester's railway station, with some 2,000 workmen set loose on the undertaking. Its synonyms pull in two directions. Enterprise and pursuit stress the effort, while establishment points to the organization that carries the work on. Undertaking can lean either way.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A promise, pledge, or guarantee to do or not do something.

   The contractor signed an undertaking to finish the work by June.

   Their written undertaking promised repayment within a year.

   Similarpromise, pledge, guarantee, commitment, assurance

   Note

   Official and legal language is where this pledge lives. Governments, parties to an agreement and litigants before a court give undertakings, and the noun is countable and often plural. It usually takes a that-clause or a to-infinitive naming what will or will not be done. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office wrote in 2023 that Hong Kong's government "has given undertakings that such powers will not be used."

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of undertake.

   The agency is undertaking a comprehensive study of regional traffic patterns.

   Undertaking the renovation without a permit landed them in legal trouble.

   Note

   A verb form with two jobs. After be it is a participle: the agency is undertaking a study. As a gerund it acts like a noun but keeps its direct object: undertaking the renovation without a permit. That object is the test that separates it from the noun for the act, which needs of instead: the undertaking of the rescue.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The business of an undertaker; the work of arranging and managing funerals.

   He trained in undertaking, learning to prepare bodies and arrange burials.

   Their undertaking handled most of the funerals in the county for decades.

   Note

   The trade that gives the undertaker his name, a figure now more often called a funeral director. Context usually settles the meaning, but a phrase like a family undertaking could point to a funeral firm or to a project someone takes on. In writing where both readings are plausible, funeral business or funeral home removes the doubt.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The act of taking something on, or of giving a pledge to do something.

   The undertaking of the rescue required hours of preparation.

   His undertaking of the debt freed his brother from the loan.

   Similarassumption

   Note

   The act noun usually comes with of: the undertaking of the rescue, his undertaking of the debt. Its listed opposite, overtaking, points to a road meaning. In informal British use, to undertake is to pass a slower vehicle on the curbside rather than on the side nearest oncoming traffic. Undertaking is that maneuver, the mirror image of overtaking.

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