bring, take

Bring indicates movement toward a place identified with the speaker; it suggests "to come here with." Take suggests movement away from such a place and indicates "to go there with." One takes money to a supermarket and brings home groceries (and no money). In ordinary usage, these words are often interchanged, but the distinction just noted persists to a degree. You can take or bring someone to a party, take or bring someone to have lunch, but the word selected has some bearing upon the relationship to the speaker of the place involved in the action.

     Both bring and take combine with many prepositions to form phrases with distinct meanings: "bring about," "bring around," "bring down," "bring forward," "bring in," "bring off," "bring on," "bring out," "bring over," "bring to," "bring up"; "take aback," "take after," "take apart," "take back," "take for," "take on," "take over," "take to," "take up." Each word also appears in many trite expressions, normally to be avoided."Take it lying down," "take it on the chin," "take aback seat," and "take five" are examples. So, too, are "bring to an end, '" a wordy expression since end conveys the full idea, as it does in "put an end to" and "come to an end." The cliché "bring to a head" is really an unpleasant expression, as well as being trite and wordy: it means "to cause pus to form." Why not say, instead, precipitate or crystallize?"Bring to a boil" and "bring to a climax" are less unpleasant but equally trite expressions.