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| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. My name is Alisha, and in this lesson, we're going to talk about the verb "take." Let's get started. |
| Let's begin with the basic definition of this verb. So, the basic definition of the verb "to take" is to remove something but often without permission to remove it. Some examples of this, "You took the last cookie?" "Your dog is about to take your lunch." |
| Now, let's look at the conjugations for this verb. Present, take, takes; past, took; past participle, taken; progressive, taking. |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. The first one. The first additional meaning is to receive or to accept something. Some examples. "Does this restaurant take credit cards?" "All the teachers took a 5% pay cut." So, in the first example sentence, "Does this restaurant take credit cards?" "Take" here means accept. In other words, this sentence means, "Can I use a credit card at this restaurant?" But we use the verb "take" in an expression like this instead. "Does this restaurant take credit cards?" "Does this restaurant accept credit cards?" We use the verb "take" here. |
| In the second example sentence, it also means accept or receive. But in this case, it means like probably that the teachers are not willing or they're not happy about a 5% pay cut, but they have to accept it. They have no choice but to accept it. So, "They took a 5% pay cut." So, the expression, "All the teachers took a 5% pay cut" shows they received it or they accepted this 5% pay cut, but maybe they weren't really happy about it, or they didn't want to, but they accepted it. |
| So, the second additional meaning of this verb is to cause something to go to another place. So, examples of this, "I should have taken an umbrella to the office." "That bus will take you to the airport." Okay. So, here, we see "take" being used to describe maybe an object or a person moving to another location because of something else. In the first example sentence, it's a person, like, "I should have taken an umbrella to the office." So, "I should have moved my umbrella from probably my house to my office. I should have done that myself." In the second example sentence, "That bus will take you to the airport," it means via that bus, using that bus, your body, you, as a person, will cause to be moved to the airport. So, we use the verb "take" to do that. "That bus will take you to the airport, move you to the airport." |
| Let's move on to the third additional meaning for this verb. The third additional meaning for this verb is to grasp, to hold, or to grip something. Examples of this, "Can you take my bag for a second?" "Take this pen and write your name." So, here, we see "take" being used to mean like hold something or grip something. In the first example, we see a very common expression, "Can you take my bag for a second?" You're asking someone else, "Please hold this for a moment." "Please just carry this for a moment." So, "Please take this bag," "Please take this phone," "Please take my keys or something for a short period of time," is sort of the feeling here. In the second example sentence, "Take this pen and write your name." It's two commands, actually, "Take this pen," one, meaning, put this pen in your hand, hold this in your hand, and after that, write your name, probably with the pen. So, we're meaning hold, or carry, or grasp something, but we used the verb "take" here instead. In most cases, we use "take" just for quick everyday expressions like these. |
| Okay. Let's move on to the fourth additional meaning for the verb. So, the fourth additional meaning is quite open, it's to do or to perform something. So, examples of this, "I've taken that test five times." "Let me take a look at that email." So, I said this means like to do or to perform something, but when I say "perform," I don't mean like to perform entertainment, I mean like to do an action. I mean, perform as like the formal version of do something. So, in the first example sentence, "I've taken the test five times," it means like I have done essentially. I have registered and written the test. The act of test-taking. "I have done that. I've performed the test five times." In the second example sentence, "Let me take a look at that email." We could say, "Let me look at that email," but saying, "Take a look," it sounds a little bit more casual, kind of a little bit quicker I suppose too, if you say, "Let me look at that email." And maybe it sounds more focused. "Take a look" sounds like maybe a quick look only or it sounds a little bit faster, I suppose. So, "take a look" means to do something. |
| Okay. Let's move on to some variations for the verb "take." Of course, actually, with this verb, there are a lot of idioms and a lot of phrasal verbs. So, these are just a few. You can check a dictionary online to see some more examples as well. But these are some that might be useful to you right away. |
| The first variation for this verb is "to take after someone." "To take after someone" means to resemble someone, meaning, to look like someone, but not just in appearance. This can be in terms of personality, in terms of your behavior, maybe in terms of your career choices. So, some examples of this, "She takes after her father." "I hope the kids don't take after their grandmother." Okay. So, the first one, "She takes after her father" means she does something that is similar to her father. In the second example sentence, "I hope the kids don't take after their grandmother," the speaker hopes the children don't have the same behavior or don't have the same something, maybe personality or maybe looks, appearance. They don't do something similar to their grandmother. So, "to take after someone" means to resemble someone in some way. |
| Okay. Let's move on to the second variation for this verb. So, the second variation is "to take someone or something on." So, we can use "to take someone on, to take something on." Both of these kinds of have the image of a challenge of some kind. So, we're accepting a challenge. This can be a physical challenge, or it can mean like a career challenge, a project challenge, a conceptual challenge. Examples, "If you threaten him, he'll take you on." "I'm taking on some new responsibilities at work." In the first example sentence, it could be a physical challenge, "If you threaten him, he'll take you on." This could mean a physical fight. So, accepting a physical fight. "He'll take you on, he will take you on" means he will accept your challenge. So, that could mean having a physical fight. It could mean having some kind of like legal fight. We don't know. It's quite an open expression. But it means he will accept your challenge and try to win. In the second example sentence, "I'm taking on some new responsibilities at work," we see that the speaker has received new responsibilities or maybe has agreed to take new responsibilities, has agreed to accept new responsibilities, and they're going to try to achieve those things, like achieve new goals, for example. So, "I'm taking on. I'm accepting and trying to work hard on a new challenge." |
| Okay. Let's move along to the third variation. The third variation is "to take something back." "To take something back" actually has two different meanings, depending on the context. Let's start with the first one. The first meaning of "to take something back" is to return something to a store. Examples, "I need to take back that sweater." "Have you taken back those shoes?" So, here, "to take back" just means to return an item to a store, something you purchased, you want your money to be returned to you, so you return the item and you receive your money. We say, "Take back. I need to take this item back to the store. I need to return this item," is what it means. |
| However, there is a second meaning for "to take back." It means like to cancel or to nullify something that you previously said or previously wrote, usually because there was a mistake or there was something wrong or you offended somebody. There was some problem with what you said. Examples, "You should take back what you said about her." "Our manager took back her comments about our design when she saw how successful it was." Alright. So, in these examples, we see people in situations where someone should sort of cancel or someone should agree that the thing that they said in the past was wrong. In the first example sentence, "You should take back what you said about her," it means you need to recognize that you said something incorrect or inappropriate about her and you should recognize that and try to sort of fix the problem, fix that situation. You can't of course not unsay words, if that makes sense. You can't just physically remove your words from someone's memory, but you can recognize that you made a mistake and say that like--you can say, "Okay, I take it back. I'm sorry." Like, "I cancel what I've said before," in other words. In the second example sentence, we see it in past tense, "Our manager took back her comments." So, meaning, the manager recognized that she made a mistake, so her previous comments were probably negative about the design. "She took back her comments," meaning, she recognized her mistake and she admitted she had been wrong when she saw that the design was successful. So, we see, "to take back," or in this case, past tense, "took back" refers to recognizing in the past that you made a mistake in your speech or in your writing and saying so to people. So, "I made a mistake. I take it back." |
| So, those are a few new ways to use the verb "take." I hope that you found something new that you can use quickly. Of course, as I said, there are many, many different ways to use "take" as both a noun and a verb for that matter. Please take a look at a dictionary if you want to get some more details about this word. There are lots to know. Don't forget to leave us a comment if you have any questions or if you want to try to make an example sentence as well. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye. |
| Let's take a look at "take." Why am I snowshoeing? So, the second additional meaning is to cause something to go to another place. Did you see my hand move? |
| Female: No, it wasn't. |
| Alisha: I was like--the second meaning is to cause something to go to a different place. That was pretty good, actually. |
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