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Take a trip

Posted by R. Berg on October 18, 2007

In Reply to: Take a trip posted by Diana on October 18, 2007

: How does one, "Take a trip". You can pay for a trip, go on vacation, travel, etc., but how can you "take" a trip. Spend a trip, maybe. Since it is always taxing on the body to travel. And, what about, "spend a day", or even, "spend" any amount of time. Endure time, maybe. But spend? It isn't a denomination of paper money used by an economic system in society, or something traded for anything of monetary value. Oh, wait, I guess it is something traded for something else of monetary value. We get paid by the hour, don't we. So I guess our time is as good as gold.

Any resource can be spent or expended, not just money, and time is a resource to those who think of it that way. One has a fixed amount of it and chooses how to use it.

As it happens, I recently talked with my linguist friend about "take." You can take a nap or have a nap, or just nap. You can take a bath or have a bath, or just bathe. "Take" is used when the idea of initiating the action is prominent. An adult takes a bath (active); a baby has a bath (passive; bathed by someone else). "He bathed" is intermediate. ~rb

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