Delegate — A Vocabulary Story
One Boy. One Dream. One Very Unhelpful Dog.
Sonny had been building all afternoon.
The train track snaked through the living room, under the coffee table, around the dog's bed (the dog was not pleased), through the hallway, and — this was the part Sonny was most proud of — up a ramp made from three encyclopaedias and a biscuit tin lid.
World record territory. Definitely.
There were, however, a couple of problems. The track kept collapsing near the kitchen door, the dog kept stealing pieces, and he'd completely run out of curved sections.
His little sister Bea appeared in the doorway, holding seventeen curved pieces.
"Where did you find those?" Sonny demanded.
"Under my bed." She paused. "I could help, you know."
"I'm fine."
The track collapsed again. The dog trotted off with a junction piece.
Sonny stared at the ceiling. He needed to delegate.
Delegate means a person chosen to represent others at a meeting or conference. As a verb, it means to give a task or responsibility to someone else, or to choose someone to act as a representative.
He needed to entrust parts of the build to someone else instead of gripping every single piece himself. But that felt like losing.
Except he wasn't winning. He was losing to a Labrador.
"Fine. I'm delegating. Bea, curved sections. Dad, keep the dog away from the track. Grandad — find the spare box."
Nobody argued. Within minutes, everyone had a job and was getting on with it. Sonny stayed in the middle, connecting, directing, keeping everything moving.
Forty minutes later, the train completed the entire track without derailing once.
Sonny filmed it, posted it, and received eleven comments asking if his dog was available for future videos.
Word Definition
delegate
meaning
a person chosen to represent others at a meeting or conference; to give a task or responsibility to someone else; to choose someone to act as a representative
synonyms
representative · envoy · assign · entrust · appoint
antonyms
keep · retain · withhold
example sentence
Each school sent one delegate to the youth parliament.