different between authority vs assignment

English

Alternative forms

• authourity, authoritie, autority, auctoritie (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English auctorite, autorite (“authority, book or quotation that settles an argument”), from Old French auctorité, from Latin stem of auct?rit?s (“invention, advice, opinion, influence, command”), from auctor (“master, leader, author”). For the presence of the h, compare the etymology of author.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???????ti/, /???????ti/
• (US) IPA^(key): /??????ti/, /??????ti/
• (obsolete) IPA^(key): /???t???ti/
• Hyphenation: au?thor?i?ty
• Rhymes: -???ti

Noun

authority (countable and uncountable, plural authorities)

1. (uncountable) The power to enforce rules or give orders.
   • 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Chapter V

     But in the meantime Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him.

2. (used in singular or plural form) Persons in command; specifically, government.
3. (countable) A person accepted as a source of reliable information on a subject.
   • 1930 September 18, Albert Einstein, as quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1988) by Banesh Hoffman

     To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

4. Government-owned agency which runs a revenue-generating activity.

   New York Port Authority

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• have something on good authority

References

• authority at OneLook Dictionary Search
• authority in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• authority in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Etymology

From Middle English assignement, from Old French assignement.

Pronunciation

Noun

assignment (countable and uncountable, plural assignments)

1. The act of assigning; the allocation of a job or a set of tasks.

   This flow chart represents the assignment of tasks in our committee.

2. The categorization of something as belonging to a specific category.

   We should not condone the assignment of asylum seekers to that of people smugglers.

3. An assigned task.

   The assignment the department gave him proved to be quite challenging.

4. A position to which someone is assigned.

   Unbeknownst to Mr Smith, his new assignment was in fact a demotion.

5. (education) A task given to students, such as homework or coursework.

   Mrs Smith gave out our assignments, and said we had to finish them by Monday.

6. (law) A transfer of a right or benefit from one person to another.

   The assignment of the lease has not been finalised yet.

7. (law) A document that effects this transfer.

   Once you receive the assignment in the post, be sure to sign it and send it back as soon as possible.

8. (programming) An operation that assigns a value to a variable.

Hyponyms

• (programming): augmented assignment

Translations

References

• assignment on Wikipedia.Wikipedia