- task
- task, duty, assignment, job, stint, chore are comparable when they mean a piece of work which one is asked to do and is expected to accomplish.Task refers to a specific piece of work or service usually imposed by authority or circumstance but sometimes undertaken voluntarily{
some person or some organization whose task it is to realize the daydreams of the masses— Huxley
}{the spirit in which judge or advocate is to look upon his task— Cardozo
}Duty is likely to indicate work, service, or conduct enjoined on a person because of his rank, status, occupation, or affiliation; it is more likely in most uses to suggest obligation, often moral, than specific imposition by a taskmaster{it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is— John Marshall
}{some of the military branches having a preferred status . . . had higher pay scales for less dangerous duties— Kingsley Davis
}Assignment suggests a specific amount of work or sort of service assigned authoritatively{it is not our assignment to settle specific questions of territories— Truman
}Job is a general term wide in suggestion ranging from voluntary undertaking of some signal service down to an assigned bit of menial work{a job that suffers from some relative poverty in charm, such as totting up endless small sums at a desk or feeding coal in at the door of a furnace— Montague
}Stint stresses carefully or equitably measured or timed apportionment of work{took to doing "German Romance" as my daily work, ten pages daily my stint— Carlyle
}Chore is likely to suggest minor routine activity necessary for continuing satisfactory operating (as of farm or office){leisure after the chores and happy meeting places where the farmer and his family might play— Burlingame
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
