UNDERTA'KING, participle present tense Engaging in; taking in hand; beginning to perform; stipulating to execute. UNDERTA'KING, noun Any business, work or project which a person engages in, or attempts to perform; an enterprise. The canal, or the making of the canal, from the Hudson to lake Erie, a distance of almost four hundred miles, was the greatest undertaking of the kind in modern times. The attempt to find a navigable passage to the Pacific round North America, is a hazardous undertaking and probably useless to navigation.
Source: Webster's 1828 American Dictionary ↗ · public-domain · returned verbatim, no AI