"take (do) exercise"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Mon Jun 4 13:50:00 UTC 2007


My grandmother used to say "take (some) exercise," but I say "do" some.

  I'm sure, though, I've never heard of "taking travel." "Trips," of course.

  JL

Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Amy West
Subject: Re: "take (do) exercise"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A similiarly archaic-sounding (to my ears) "take N" that I heard my
mother use once was "take travel." It sounded very odd to me, but I
could see it being parallel to "take trips."

---Amy West

>Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 14:44:06 -0400
>From: Charles Doyle
>Subject: "take (do) exercise"
>
>Yesterday as I prepared to go running (it was a rare unsmoky day in
>Georgia), I said to my wife, "I've got to go take some exercise." As
>I heard myself, I remarked (to myself)that "take" in that
>construction sounds archaic. Nowadays, most prople would say "do
>some exercise" or just "exercise."
>
>The OED does not seem to enter the (idiomatic?) phrase "take
>exercise" per se, though it uses the phrase in a handful of
>definitions (in fact, the definition of "exercise" v.6d is "to take
>exercise"). Scattered through the OED, the phrase appears in
>quotations from a1859, 1865, 1886, and 1900.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list