delegate
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.a person who is chosen to speak or vote for a group, especially at a large meeting or conference.
n.a person authorized to act as a representative for another, typically within the context of a conference, political convention, or legislative body.
Simple“Each country sent a delegate to the international climate summit to discuss the new treaty.”
In context“The union delegates voted unanimously to reject the management's proposal, citing concerns over long-term job security and pension contributions.”
Synonyms - 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to give part of your work, power, or responsibilities to someone else.
v.to entrust a task or responsibility to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself.
Simple“A good manager knows how to delegate tasks so they can focus on the big picture.”
In context“The director was forced to delegate the final stages of the project to her deputy while she attended the emergency board meeting.”
UsageThe verb is often used intransitively when describing a management style.
PitfallHe delegated the report for his assistant. He delegated the report to his assistant.You delegate a task 'to' a person, not 'for' them.
- 03 C1 Advanced
n.a type of variable that points to a specific function or method so it can be called later.
n.a type of object that encapsulates a reference to a method with a specific signature, functioning similarly to a type-safe function pointer.
Simple“The programmer used a delegate to handle the event when the user clicked the button.”
In context“By using a delegate, the developer decoupled the event-handling logic from the core user interface components, improving the code's maintainability.”
- 04 C1 Advanced
v.to give control of a part of a website address to a different server.
v.to transfer authority over a subdomain to a different name server in the Domain Name System.
Simple“The company decided to delegate the blog subdomain to a specialized hosting provider.”
In context“To improve performance, the IT department delegated the regional subdomains to local servers located closer to the end users.”
“The court may specify how that disposal will happen, or it may delegate that decision to a person appointed to carry out the order.”
“A few days after the incident, the NTSB was “delegated the investigation in full” by the Greek authorities.”
From Middle English delegat, from Old French delegat, from Latin dēlēgātus substantivized from the nominative masculine singular of dēlēgātus, the perfect passive participle of dēlēgō (“to send, assign, delegate”), see -ate (noun-forming suffix). See also legate.
From the above noun by metanalysis or directly borrowed from Latin dēlēgātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
From Middle English delegat(e) (“delegated”, used as a past participle and adjective), used as the past participle of delegate up until Early Modern English, see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.