Come, bring, go, and take are English verbs with very close meanings. Let’s see when to use them.
A Video Summary about come, bring, go and take
A few explanations about come, bring, go and take
COME, BRING, GO, TAKE – THE DIFFERENCES
Come, bring, go and take are words that often cause confusion for people learning English. These four verbs are used to express movement; the difference that helps decide which one to use, is the direction in which a person or thing is moving.
So, we first need to think about where the speaker is. If I say to you “come here”, I want you to move from where you are, to where I am. If I say, “go away”, I want you to move from where I am to another place. (Note: telling someone to “go away” is a bit rude, so try to avoid that!)
COME OR GO?
We use ‘come’ to describe movement from the listener to the speaker, for example, on the phone you might say:
Are you coming to my house today? |
We can also use ‘come’ to describe movement from the speaker to the listener, for example:
Will I come to your house today? |
We use ‘go’ to describe movement away from a location, for example, if someone is leaving your location you might say:
Where are you going? |
BRING OR TAKE?
‘Bring’ and ‘take’ have the same kind of relationship as ‘come’ and ‘go’, the direction matters!
- When you say ‘bring’, something or someone is being moved towards a location.
- When you say ‘take’, something or someone is being moved away from a location.
For example,
When you’re invited to a party, you bring a gift. |
At the end of the party, you might take home some cake! |
Sometimes, both ‘bring’ and ‘take’ work, depending on the perspective. For example, you can take your lunch to the office (because you’re taking it away from your home) or you can bring your lunch to the office (because you’re arriving to the office with your lunch)
COME WITH
We use ‘come with’ when someone is joining the speaker’s movement. For example, “I am going to a party, would you like to come with me?”.
COME FROM
We can use ‘come from’ to express a country or place of origin, for example, “I come from Dublin, my friend comes from Barcelona and the blood oranges we are eating come from an orange grove in southern Spain”.
Exercises About Come, Bring, Go and Take
Exercise 1: Complete these sentences with the correct verb; come or go. Be careful to use the correct tense!
Exercise 2: Complete these sentences with the correct verb; bring or take. Be careful to use the correct tense!
Exercise 3: Fill the gaps in these sentences with come, go, bring or take:
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