For those of you who define yourselves as refined and have difficulty being uncouth I would advise you not to read this post.
With that said here are some thoughts that I've had for some time.
Why is it that when someone needs to relieve themselves they often use the well known phrase "I need to take a crap" or "I am going to take a crap"? I have no problem with this announcement (in the appropriate setting) other than that it confuses me. Why "Take"? Why not "Leave" or "Give"? Its just not logical. I can't imagine anyone actually "takes", while everyone "leaves". So why do we say this? This has been a question of mine for some time now, I'm just finally getting around to airing it. Isn't this just real brain food for ya?
With that said here are some thoughts that I've had for some time.
Why is it that when someone needs to relieve themselves they often use the well known phrase "I need to take a crap" or "I am going to take a crap"? I have no problem with this announcement (in the appropriate setting) other than that it confuses me. Why "Take"? Why not "Leave" or "Give"? Its just not logical. I can't imagine anyone actually "takes", while everyone "leaves". So why do we say this? This has been a question of mine for some time now, I'm just finally getting around to airing it. Isn't this just real brain food for ya?
3 comments:
Hmmmm, boy, you got me thinking....'leaving' seems to be the best thing to do.
Wow, this is deep....i'll have to think and get back to ya, lol. Your coming to my house!!! YAY!
Well, you see, being a philologist (lit. lover of words) by trade and hobby, I’ve pondered this one before as well as other similar but less disturbing examples such as “take your photo”, “take a nap”, take my leave, “take to the hills, “take a hike”, take (this or that) to mean (the other)”, etc. And in fact, there is a systematic method for figuring these things out! You just find as many instances of the word in the past as you can and analyze the usage for meaning and context; then you do the same for recent history and oftentimes some meaningful relationship will surface (meaningful to philologists and snobs mostly). Now about this “taking a crap” business. As the above examples illustrate, ‘take’ can and does mean many things ranging from mental perception/acquisition, physical receiving, motion towards a goal, etc. So too with ‘crap’. It can be a noun, verb, or, my personal favorite, with the inflectional addition of a ‘py’, an adjective. In the case then of our puzzling expression “take a crap”, it is important to recognize that the verb ‘take’ is not actually a verb at all but rather a verbal noun in the form of a present, active, complementary infinitive “to take” and does not strictly refer to the act of receiving. Instead it insinuates more of a motion towards the goal of realizing the verbal action. So too with ‘crap’. Here it is not used in a strict, exclusively noun sense referring to the substance (of crap), but rather has verbal, almost gerundive nuances, just as ‘hike’ does in our previous example referring to the act (of crapping). And so you see that what we mean when we say “take a crap” in our modern vernacular English may very well have been rendered in old or middle English as “to betake myself for the purpose of crapping”. But as with any language, modern English regrettably has been truncated and abbreviated over time causing these occasional perplexities. The main point of all this is clearly that classicists (even crappy ones) are of practical value in the real world! adr
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