“Take a break” means to stop what you are doing for a short time and rest. A break can last five minutes in the middle of work, or several months if you put an activity aside for a while: “take a break from social media”.
Want to remember take a break?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
take a break (from + noun/-ing); take a short/coffee/ten-minute break; have a break
- After two hours of revision, I usually take a short break and go for a walk.
- Our manager suggested taking a coffee break before the next meeting.
- I'm taking a break from social media for the whole of August.
What changed
First versionI'm tired. Let's make a break and finish the slides later.
RevisionI'm tired. Let's take a break and finish the slides later.
It is tempting to use “make” here, but with “break” in the sense of a pause, English uses “take”, and in British English also “have”. “Make a break for” means to suddenly run towards something, so the meaning changes completely.
“Take a break” is a pause in an activity you will come back to. “Take a day off” means to have a day away from work: “I'm taking a day off on Friday.” “Rest” is about relaxing in general to recover your strength: “The doctor told me to rest for a week.”
Your turn
We've been working on this report since nine, so let's ___ for fifteen minutes.
Show the answer
take a break — With “break” in the sense of a pause, the verb is “take”: “let's take a break”. “Make a break” is not used for a pause, and “make a break for it” actually means “try to escape”.
Describe how you rest during long hours of study or work. Say how often you take a break and what you do during it.
When I study for exams, I take a break every hour and make myself a cup of tea.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.