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>One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't "have time for" something. Time is not something you have; The "have time" phrase is an idiom[1]: a grou
by jasode 4y ago
>One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't "have time for" something. Time is not something you have;
The "have time" phrase is an idiom[1]: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light ).
For the criticism you wrote about "have", someone else can write the same criticism about "take" in "taking the time". And the same defense can be used for that too: "take the time" is another idiom that must be interpreted as a group and shouldn't be logically parsed as separate words.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=idiom https://www.google.com/search?q=idiom
- laserlight 4y agoWhen people talk about having time, they are not aware that it's an idiom for sparing time to do it. They talk about having time as in having money, like it's something that one can pull out of a drawer.
- hazz99 4y agoIs that not accurate? There’s only so many hours in the day, and I have to split them between competing priorities. If I don’t have time for something, I don’t have the remaining hours to spend on it, given the time I’ll spend doing other things.
- kqr 4y agoYou have no choice but to spend all your 24 hours in the day. You can't just skip over 7--9 AM and then have two hours in your back pocket for when you are short on time. So no, you never just have time you're not using anyway. You're always using all of your time. On what is a matter of priorities. However, if you would spend 19--21 watching a TV series, or twiddling your thumbs, you can choose to take that time to do something else.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago"take" is weird wording too. it's your time, you already have it. it's just how you use it.