Talk:take aloft

RFD discussion: November 2015–January 2016

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

take aloft

Doesn't look like a phrasal verb to me. --SimonP45 (talk) 11:09, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• Keep It's not really "take" "aloft" (any more than take off is "take" "off"), although the usage example isn't the clearest. Have changed to a better one. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:30, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• Delete. take (“to lead, carry, or cause to go along to another place”) (MWOnline) + aloft (“at, to, or in the air or sky”). It is just like "I took the car to the garage." DCDuring TALK 12:26, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

But in "He took aloft", what is being taken? Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@Smurrayinchester I was focused on "transitive" use.

Is what you are focused on something analogous to They took to the streets? If so, take (“to betake oneself: set out: go”) take after a purse snatcher (MWOnline) would seem to cover it. DCDuring TALK 18:45, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't see that sense at [[take]], DCDuring. Am I missing it?​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:39, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Delete. There are synonyms such as "take to the skies" and "take to the air". I suppose you could say that the object is an unexpressed "oneself". Chuck Entz (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Many intransitive verbs can be looked at that way (as "understood" reflexives) in one or more of their definitions. DCDuring TALK 21:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:22, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• Keep for the time being, seems very idiomatic to me - i.e. from the sum of its parts I would have never expected it to mean what it is defined as .... this however raises the question of how accurate the def is - the intransitive especially is interesting, but I'd like to see more citations --Sonofcawdrey (talk) 14:18, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

  This is the same use of take as in take wing (which apparently seems idiomatic to some lexicographers), take to the air, take to sea, and take across the road and similar to take to flying. This sense of take seems archaic to me, as does aloft. Combining archaic uses of words does not necessarily an idiom make, especially if the combination is itself archaic (or literary). DCDuring TALK 14:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 22:11, 3 January 2016 (UTC)