Sapporo Language School AGREATDREAM - Eikaiwa

English Grammar & Usage List

Bring – Move an object to the place where the speaker or listener is located.

Take – Move and object to a different place from the speaker or listener.

Third party = 第三者

third party → bring → the partner of the conversation

third party → bring → speaker or writer

speaker or writer ↔ bring ↔ talking party

third party → take → another location

talking partner → take → another place

speaker or writer → take → another place

■ bring

1) Bring people and things to the place where the speaker (myself) is.
“Please bring me your bag.”
“You can bring some friends to our party tomorrow.”

2) Take people / things to the place where the listener (you) is located.
“I’ll bring some flowers to your office next week.”
“My friend will bring the money to you.”

■ take

Take people / things to a place different from the speaker / listener
“I’ll take a laptop to the meeting.”
“Can you take her to the concert?”

The Bring/Take Quiz

The origin of the verb bring

Old English bringan “to bear, convey, take along in coming; bring forth, produce, present, offer” (past tense brohte, past participle broht), from Proto-Germanic *brangjanan (source also of Old Frisian branga “attest, declare, assure,” Middle Dutch brenghen, Old High German bringan, German bringen, Gothic briggan). There are no exact cognates outside Germanic, but it appears to be from PIE *bhrengk- (source also of Welsh he-brwng “bring”), which, according to Watkins, isbased on root *bher- (1) “to carry,” also “to bear children,” but Boutkan writes, “We are probably dealing with a Germanic/Celtic substratum word.”

The tendency to conjugate this as a strong verb on the model of sing, drink, etc., is ancient: Old English also had a rare strong past participle form, brungen, corresponding to modern colloquial brung.

To bring forth “produce,” as young or fruit is from c. 1200.

To bring about “effect, accomplish” is from late 14c.

To bring down is from c. 1300 as “cause to fall,” 1530s as “humiliate,” 1590s as “to reduce, lessen.”

To bring down the house figuratively (1754) is to elicit applause so thunderous it collapses the theater roof.

To bring up is from late 14c. as “to rear, nurture;” 1875 as “introduce to consideration.”

To bring up the rear “move onward at the rear” is by 1708.

The origin of the verb take

Late Old English tacan “to take, seize,” from a Scandinavian source (such as Old Norse taka “take, grasp, lay hold,” past tense tok, past participle tekinn; Swedish ta, past participle tagit), from Proto-Germanic *takan- (source also of Middle Low German tacken, Middle Dutch taken, Gothic tekan “to touch”), from Germanic root *tak- “to take,” of uncertain origin, perhaps originally meaning “to touch.”

As the principal verb for “to take,” it gradually replaced Middle English nimen, from Old English niman, from the usual West Germanic verb, *nemanan (source of German nehmen, Dutch nemen; see nimble).

OED calls take “one of the elemental words of the language;” take up alone has 55 varieties of meaning in that dictionary’s 2nd print edition. Basic sense is “to lay hold of,” which evolved to “accept, receive” (as in take my advice) c. 1200; “absorb” (take a punch) c. 1200; “choose, select” (take the high road) late 13c.; “to make, obtain” (take a shower) late 14c.; “to become affected by” (take sick) c. 1300.

To take (something) on means “begin to do” from late 12c.

To take it out on (someone or something) means “to vent one’s anger on something or someone that caused the problem”, from 1840.

Take the plunge means to “act decisively”, and it’s from 1876. 

Take it easy was recorded in 1880. 

The phrase take it or leave it was recorded in 1897.

Take five is from 1929, from the approximate time it takes to smoke a cigarette. 

Take the rap means to accept (undeserved) punishment, from 1930.

The noun take

In the 1650s, “that which is taken,” from take (v.).

Sense of “money taken in” by a single performance, etc., from 1931.

It had a movie-making sense, in 1927.

A criminal sense of “money acquired by theft”, in 1888.

The verb sense of “to cheat, defraud” is from 1920. 

On the take “amenable to bribery” is from 1930.