Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Wednesday Words ~ bring, take

  
Two by Two ~ by Nicholas Sparks, 2016, fiction (North Carolina), 8/10
"I put the other photos in a box if you want to bring them with you.  There are some fantastic ones of you and London."
"That would be great."
I went to the closet and retrieved the box. ... "I'll put this in the trunk," I said.
I've taken this example from page 345, but Nicholas Sparks used "bring" consistently where I would say "take."  If I wanted a book that a child had (for instance), I would say, "Bring me the book."  But Sparks used the word "bring" when he wanted that book to go in the other direction.  If, for example, a character had a book to give the mother, he might say to the child:
"Here, bring this book to your mother across the room."
Is this a regional thing?  How do you use these two words?

1 comment:

Bonnie Jacobs said...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bring-vs-take-usage

I ran across this information on Merriem-Webster's website today and thought I'd share the link along with this summary of the article:

"While bring often implies movement toward the speaker, and take often implies movement away from the speaker, either word is used when it's unclear or unimportant what the direction of the motion is: 'Bring the Merriam-Webster dictionary with you to the pub' and 'Take the Merriam-Webster dictionary with you to the pub' are both perfectly acceptable."