Using ‘take for example’ in a sentence is to repeat oneself

The English verb to take usually means to grab by hand.  To take is to identify an item from a category of items. To take is to pick or adduce some particular thing or idea as representing a whole category.  To take, then, means to latch onto and use something or some idea.

That is why it is tautological for a newspaper writer to ask his or her audience to “take for example”.  For here, to take already means to make an example of, namely, to exemplify. To take, then, is already the same thing as to name an example or two of a category.

To “take for example” is, therefore, to repeat oneself in a very ugly manner. That is why, in this context, the verb to take means merely to “make an example of”, namely, to parade or use as a representative item. That is why to “take for example” is to utter pathetic tautology. 

SHAMEFUL

It is to repeat oneself in a shameful manner because here to take already means to cite something as a good example of what one is saying.

In the expression “take for example”, the words “for example” are completely unnecessary because, here, the verb to take already means to make an example of, namely, to exemplify. 

As we remember from this column, to take is to mention or recognise as an example of a larger category that the speaker or writer has already named.

To take is to name something at some subsequent point as an example from a list that the speaker or writer has earlier in his or her story or statement already given a generic name.

To take, then, is already to exemplify, namely, to name or to parade as one instance or several instances of a whole category that the speaker or writer has already given a name. 

COMMON INVITATIONS

Yet in Kenya and in other former colonies of England in which I have worked — including Tanzania and Uganda — to take is among the most common invitations through English. “Take your choice” and “Take it from me” are just two examples of the idiomatic use of the splendidly versatile English verb to take.

But let me reiterate that, in many circumstances, the invitation “to take” a choice may sometimes refer even to an educated and deeply informed choice and that, in the modern world, the ability to choose objectively is among the most vexed of all the political questions that face most voters, especially in the Third World.

It is that nobody is concerned to educate the masses well enough concerning the appropriate choices open to them in terms of representation.

In Kenya we are so backward in our knowledge of history and of national needs that practically everybody votes according only to the ethnic group to which the presidential candidate belongs. That is why it will take us a long time yet before we can ever come close to winning  what one history-maker called “the battle for democracy”.

Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. [email protected]