Take

How to spell take

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce take

What does take mean?

1. verbTo reach for and hold something, or to carry, accept, or require something.
2. nounA single recorded attempt at a scene, song, or shot in film or audio production.

Take in a sentence

• verb

  Please take your coat before you leave the office.

• noun

  The director kept the first take because the lighting was perfect.

• verb

  The new route should take about twenty minutes by car.

• noun

  The band nailed the chorus on the third take in the studio.

Where does take come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Take is one of the relatively few core English verbs borrowed from Old Norse rather than inherited directly from Old English. It comes from the Old Norse verb 'taka', meaning 'to grasp, seize, or lay hold of', which Scandinavian settlers carried into the north and east of England during the Viking age. Over the late Old English and early Middle English period it gradually pushed aside the native Old English verb 'niman' (which once meant the same thing and survives only in scattered traces), becoming the ordinary word for grasping or receiving something by around the 1100s and 1200s. From that physical sense of seizing it spread outward to cover an enormous range of meanings, from carrying something away to accepting, requiring, or even recording. Because it is a short, blunt monosyllable that English has used for nearly a thousand years, the spelling is fully regular and the silent final 'e' simply marks the long 'a' sound, exactly as in 'make' and 'bake'.

How the word is built

• take (single Old Norse root verb, no prefix or suffix)