Take in means to understand and absorb information or news, especially when there is a lot of it or it is unexpected. The second meaning is to deceive: be taken in by someone means to believe a liar and fall for a trick.
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take in + information/news; take it all in; be taken in by + person/trick
- The course covered so much in one day that I couldn't take it all in.
- She read the letter twice, trying to take in the news.
- Many older customers were taken in by emails that looked like they came from their bank.
What changed
First versionThe lecture was so fast that it was hard to take all the information.
RevisionThe lecture was so fast that it was hard to take in all the information.
It is easy to leave out in here, because take by itself seems enough. But take without in doesn't work in this meaning: hard to take usually means 'hard to bear or accept'. To say that you absorb information, you need take in, so the corrected version adds in.
Take in is easy to confuse with take up. Take up means to start a new activity: I took up yoga last year. Take in is about what we understand or accept: It took me a minute to take in what she said. It can also mean to give someone a home: They took in a stray cat.
Your turn
The seller seemed so honest that dozens of buyers were ___ by his story.
Show the answer
taken in — The buyers believed the seller and fell for his trick, which is be taken in by. Taken up means 'started' or 'occupied' (about time or space) and doesn't fit the meaning here.
Think of a day when a lot of new information came at you at once: your first day at work or an introductory lecture. Write what was hard to take in and why.
On my first day at the bank, I couldn't take in all the security rules because my manager explained twenty of them in ten minutes.
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