English Q: Take, get, board, alight (transport)

[Guest Wai_Wai]

Take, get, board, alight (transport)

 

Please correct me if I am wrong.

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Usage relating to going into/out of a transport:

 

If going into a public transport

Take a bus/taxi

Get on [NOT into] a bus/lift; Get into a taxi

Board a bus/taxi

 

If going out of a transport

Take off a bus/taxi

Get off [NOT out of] a bus/lift. Get out of a taxi

Alight a bus/taxi

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If all are correct, please send a message to confirm.

If any mistake, it would be very grateful if you can point it out.

[Phi for All]

Board a bus/taxi

You can board a bus or a boat' date=' but you get into or take a taxi.

Take off a bus/taxi

No. You do not take off in public transportation. The pilot of a plane will take off, not you. Otherwise take off is to remove, as in personal effects like clothes and jewelry.

Get off [NOT out of] a bus/lift. Get out of a taxi

Correct.

Alight a bus/taxi

No. Forget alight, it's archaic and no one uses it, at least in the US.

[atinymonkey]

Alight from a bus.

Alight from the taxi.

 

Only British rail still use the word regularly. And pretentious writers.

[Guest Wai_Wai]

You can board a bus or a boat' date=' but you get into or take a taxi.

No. You do not take off in public transportation. The pilot of a plane will take off, not you. Otherwise take off is to remove, as in personal effects like clothes and jewelry.

Correct.

No. Forget alight, it's archaic and no one uses it, at least in the US.[/quote']

 

Hi. Thanks for your answer.

Further questions:

About "board"

Is it the same as "get on/off"?

"Get on/off" is used with large transport, something that you can just walk in without bending your body. The antonym is "Get into /out of".

 

Is "board" used in spoken language?

 

 

take off

An example is http://www.ijs.si/ijs/ijs-find.html. (search for "take off")

I searched the web a bit on how people say about leaving transport.

Very usually, it is "get off"

1 is "go off"

1 is "take off"

 

Q:

- is "go or take off" correct? Or does the author use wrongly?

 

alight

I made a search relating to its frequency.

http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=lang_zh-CN%7Clang_zh-TW%7Clang_en&ie=UTF-8&q=alight+bus&btnG=Search&lr=lang_zh-CN%7Clang_zh-TW%7Clang_en

There are 295,000 entries to return. (NB: the number may not be really reliable because some entries might not use "alight" in the sense of "stepping down from a vehicle". And some entries might skip in the Google search)

 

I deem "alight" can still be seen in written language. But I wonder if it is used in spoken language.

 

Relating to the usage pattern of alight:

- somebody alights (from) a vehicle

 

 

By the way, sometimes I wonder why uncommon words are still often used. To me, the main use of language is to communicate and facilitate communication. Using uncommon words (which can be replaced by plain words) are no good to communication. Meaning of a word is not obvious indeed if people do not know what it means.

 

What's more, it burdens non-native language learners. They have to spend more time to learn more difficult/uncommon words in order to understand one's passage. So it seems bad for a train station to use "alight" instead of "get off".

 

Anyway, my little opinion.

[Guest Wai_Wai]

Relating to alight

It seems it can only be used with large transport, or rathe rtransport which you walk in without bending your body.

 

I am not sure.

Can anyone confirm about that?