Phrasal Verbs with TAKE: "take to", "take in", "take after"...

http://www.engvid.com So you’ve decided to take up English. Good for you! Take your language skills further by learning phrasal verbs that use the verb TAKE. In this lesson, you’ll learn the difference between "taking a girl out to dinner" and "taking the bad guy out of action". We’ll also look at expressions such as "take to", "take in", "take after", and more. If you don’t know them already, don’t worry. I’ll take you under my wing!
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TRANSCRIPT

Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I’m Adam. Today’s lesson is, again, phrasal verbs; everybody’s favourite lessons. Today, we’re going to look at phrasal verbs using the verb "take". Again, a quick review: what is a phrasal verb? A phrasal verb is a verb and a preposition, when put together, giving different meanings. Sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes more. So, today, we’re going to look at "take out", "take in", "take over", "take up",-excuse me-"take after", "take back", "take off", "take on", "take down", "take to".

Let’s start with "take out". All of you, of course, know takeout food. You go to McDonald’s, they ask you if you want to eat in or take out. So, take out means to take your food to go. That’s one meaning. Another meaning of "take out" is the literal meaning; exactly what the words mean. For example, you have a turkey in the oven. It is finished cooking. You take it out of the oven. Then, there is also the slang. If you want to take someone out, you kill them. You see this in kind of the mob movies. They want to take someone out; they want to assassinate. Assassinate. I’ll have to… Yeah, I’ll leave that for now. Okay.

"Take in". What does "take in" mean? A few meanings as well. The first is the most common one. If your clothes are too big, if you’ve lost some weight, you might want to take in your shirt, or your dress, or your pants. You take it to a tailor, and he or she will take it in; make it smaller, tighter. Another meaning of "take in", for example, if you go outside your house and you see a cat, and the cat is sitting there: "Meow, meow", you know, it’s all sad and lonely. You take it in. It doesn’t mean you take it into your house. It, of course, means that. But more, it means like adopt. You take it into your house, you give it a home, it’s part of the family. So, you accept, you take in, you adopt something or someone.

"Take over". "Take over" means assume control of something. So, for example, if I own a big company and you own a slightly smaller company, but you’re my competition, one way I can beat you is I can take over your company. I can buy a lot of shares in your company, and I take over. I take control. If we’re going on a long road trip, and I’m driving and I’m getting tired, I say: "Oh, can you take over the driving?" Means we switch, and you continue driving.

"Take up". If you take up space, for example, it means you use. You use space. You take up space in a room. Another way to say "take up" is you start to do something new, like a new hobby, or you start learning something new. So, recently, I took up Spanish. It means I started going to Spanish classes, and I started to learn Spanish. Now, if you add "with", you can take something up with someone. It means you can discuss. So, if you have a problem in your class and you’re falling behind, and you’re not doing so well, take this problem up with your teacher. It means go to your teacher and discuss the situation. See how you can fix it. Okay.

"After". If you take after someone, means you behave like them. It’s very similar to look like, except it’s not about physical features; it’s about personality. So, if you take after someone, you are similar to someone in terms of character or behaviour. So, for example, I take after my mother. My sister takes after my father. My father was a very hot-tempered man. My sister’s a very hot-tempered woman, so she takes after him.

"Take back". Again, two meanings. There’s the literal meaning, so I lend you my pen. You use it. You finished. I take it back. You give it back to me, it returns to me; I take it back. Now, if I said something really mean to you or something not nice, or I made a promise and then I take it back, it means I cancel what I said. So, if I said something that made you upset and I take it back, it means I apologize. I take back the bad words and everything’s okay, hopefully. If I made a promise then take it back, it means I’m not going to do this promise anymore. Okay? So you have to be a little bit careful about take backs.

"Take off". I think most of you know the airplane takes off. It goes down the runway, then "whew," takes off. But "take off" can also mean to be very successful or very quickly to do well. So, a business starts and, you know, the owners are doing what they can, but suddenly the business just takes off. It becomes very popular, very successful, making lots of money, hopefully, again.