Delegation - An object oriented term.

In object oriented programming delegation refers to a design pattern where one object relies upon the other to provide a specified set of functionality[wikipedia].

The paper pioneered delegation was : Using prototypical objects to implement shared behavior in OOS - Henry Lieberman.

Short summary on the paper

Inheritance implements sets, delegation implements prototypes. Implementing the prototype approach to sharing knowledge in objected oriented systems is an alternative mechanism called delegation, appearing in the actor languages.