Take

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Basic

Take That!

This month we discover a new take, that’s a new perspective, on the world take, so take a seat (sit down) and get comfortable. Basically, to take means to obtain; sometimes it’s as easy as picking up a biscuit from a plate. Other times it involves violence: a mugger takes an old woman’s handbag and escapes. That’s a chocking experience which is very difficult to take in (or understand); everyone is taken by surprise (or shocked) by the situation.

TIME OUT

Here are some more examples. If you see on unusual bird, you “do a double take” – you see the bird the first time, look away in disbelief, and then look again to check.

Someone says, “take five”. What does that mean? Well, it’s the same as “let’s take a break,” or let’s have a five-minute rest. Perhaps you need a real break, so take off a few day from work (go on holiday), and fly to somewhere exotic. If you book last minute, the agent takes off 30 per cent –t hat’s a big discount. In no time at all, you take your seat on a plane, the plane takes off, and you’re flying high above the clouds. So take off you jacket, sit back and take it easy, just relax.

ON LOCATION

On holiday you take photographs with your camera. When a movie director makes a film, he often asks his actors to repeat a scene –each attempt is called a take, so you have take 1, take 2, and so on. One fight scene in Jackie Chan’s The Young Master was so difficult to perform, the actors needed 329 takes. Take also means “need” or “involve.” “It takes two to make a dream come true,” sang Marving Gaye. He was absolutely right because the song was a duet, and he needed partner Kim Weston to sing with him. Barbara Streisand didn’t agree: in the musical Hello Dolly she sang “It takes a woman…to bring the sweet thing in life.”