Have vs take breakfast

[whatiftheblog]

although "we breakfasted yesterday" is not something I would say and it sounds really strange. I would very likely say "we had breakfast yesterday".

go figure...

Would you say you "dined" yesterday, or "lunched" yesterday? Would those sound odd?

I use both, but only informally... "sarcastically" isn't really the right term here, and I recognize this may sound weird, but within my closest group of friends (95% American, 1 Canadian, 1 Aussie, all 30-35 y/o), we regularly use words incorrectly for fun. "To adult"/"adulting" is the easiest example to cite, though it's pretty widely used online ("I really need to adult today", "I have successfully adulted and I'm ready to go out now"). We also use "old" as a noun to mean "an old soul", mostly lovingly. "Where shall we dine?" is a text I've sent them a thousand times, though it sounds unnecessarily pretentious and odd to me (again, for fun). It may also be that we're just really strange...

[qeadz]

... we regularly use words incorrectly for fun. "To adult"/"adulting" is the easiest example to cite,...

I do exactly the same. Typical office talk:
"ugh... shall we coffee? Ive been computering too long."

Or:
Colleague: "Whats frustrating you?"
Me: "The codes be confusing... grrr" (meaning: "This section of code has been written in a confusing way")

Years ago I worked in the video game industry and we had a new hire from Japan. He had great experience, but his English was lacking. So he was taking English classes after hours. I always wondered whether his English classes really captured the every-day abuse of the language which happened at the office...

[whatiftheblog]

... we regularly use words incorrectly for fun. "To adult"/"adulting" is the easiest example to cite,...

I do exactly the same. Typical office talk:
"ugh... shall we coffee? Ive been computering too long."

Or:
Colleague: "Whats frustrating you?"
Me: "The codes be confusing... grrr" (meaning: "This section of code has been written in a confusing way").

Hah! Same. We also use names as nouns - to get "Jeffed" means to receive a stern talking-to from the boss over email, for instance.

I'm sure some young linguist is writing/has written a dissertation on what I call the "Buzzfeedification" of English, especially on this phenomenon of using nouns/names as verbs... does anyone know what the proper term for this is?

[leosmith]

I prefer to break my fast because I like a little violence in the morning.

[Cainntear]

I'm sure some young linguist is writing/has written a dissertation on what I call the "Buzzfeedification" of English, especially on this phenomenon of using nouns/names as verbs... does anyone know what the proper term for this is?

I think most people just call it "verbing", which is unique in linguistics terminology for having been invented in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip....

(There's probably no fancy Latin term for it anyway, seeing as how so many Latin verbs and nouns were just derived from each other by adding affixes anyway....)

[Serpent]

Just a type of conversion, really

[lavengro]

Just a type of conversion, really

Yep. Here's a few more, from the https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44223/verbing-or-turning-nouns-into-verbs website:

Anthimeria is the rhetorical use of a word as if it were a member of a different word class. I would expect that most examples of verbing begin as rhetorical devices.

•Conversion, also called zero derivation, is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form. ("I will table this")

•If a new word is formed "(I am tabling this") this is an example of derivation, the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word

•Because changing the class of a word changes the syntax of the word, all of these are examples of a functional shift, which occurs when an existing word takes on a new syntactic function.

[whatiftheblog]

Just a type of conversion, really

Yep. Here's a few more, from the https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44223/verbing-or-turning-nouns-into-verbs website:

Anthimeria is the rhetorical use of a word as if it were a member of a different word class. I would expect that most examples of verbing begin as rhetorical devices.

•Conversion, also called zero derivation, is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form. ("I will table this")

•If a new word is formed "(I am tabling this") this is an example of derivation, the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word

•Because changing the class of a word changes the syntax of the word, all of these are examples of a functional shift, which occurs when an existing word takes on a new syntactic function.

Oooh, neat! Thank you!

[William Camden]

I did encounter "to language" in the 1990s in a brochure on language-learning.

[reineke]

Without the context of the original thread, this looks very confusing. Can anyone provide a link...?

Anyway, to me, "take breakfast" only works (as others have said) if you're being served by a butler or are staying in a posh hotel. To me, "taking breakfast" almost refers to breakfast as an event rather than as food, whereas "having" is all about the eating.

It's pretty common (in Western Europe, at least) that while people "eat meat" in a general sense (i.e. "I eat meat" = "I'm not a vegetarian") no one ever eats a steak -- in English we "have a steak" and most other people "take" it. Similarly, "I don't drink coffee" (the rule) but I will have a hot chocolate if I'm in a café.

If you just use "eat" and "drink" to avoid the potential for mixing up "have" (English) with "take" (every other language)... well, you've not gained anything, because you still won't sound very natural, and mixing up "have" and "take" doesn't really make you that hard to understand in the first place.

Better to just learn the right word, surely...?

“You must go, sir,” he said, clamping his mouth shut, though there was a froth of reddened spittle at his lips. “I paid for breakfast. I'll leave after breakfast.” “I will refund you twenty rupees. You will take breakfast elsewhere.” “I will have breakfast here.” “Then you will take breakfast now, without delay.”

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta
Paul Theroux

"I take a whiskey drink, I take a coffee drink, and when I have to pee, I use the kitchen sink."

Homer