Take over

Take over

I have a phrasal verb for you today, and that is “take over.” When someone “takes over,” that person takes control. In the first part of this episode, I explained the rules of impeachment in the United States. If a president is removed from office, the vice president takes over. That means, the vice president takes control—takes control of the powers of the presidency, and in this case, actually becomes president.

When else would a vice president take over for a president? If the president dies, the vice president takes over. That has happened several times here in the United States, most recently in 1963. A quirk of American history: In 1841, President William Henry Harrison died in office. He had been president for 32 days. It was the first time in our history that a vice president took over as a result of the death of a president and it happened a month into the ninth president’s term.

Jay Leno was the host of a popular comedy show in the United States called The Tonight Show. It came on at about 11:30 at night on the east coast. He left the show in 2009 and Conan O’Brien took over. Leno returned for four more years, before finally retiring from the show for a second time in 2014. At that point, comedian Jimmy Fallon took over duties as host of The Tonight Show.

That’s a general use of “take over,” when you specify who comes next. First the president, then the vice president; first Jay Leno, then Jimmy Fallon. Now I want to give you two other ways to use “take over,” two more specific ways to use it.

Here’s the first way. There are times when the first person voluntarily or temporarily gives control of his position to a second person; in these cases, we say “take over for.” So we say that the second person takes over for the first—almost like a favor. This, too, has happened with American presidents. Ronald Reagan had surgery and was under anesthesia for about eight hours. During that time, his vice president, George H. W. Bush, took over for him as acting president. It was voluntary and, in this case, temporary.

If you’re on a long drive, it can be tiring to be the person driving the whole time. After about four or five hours, you might want someone to take over for you. That means, you would like someone else to be the driver, to take over for you. As a passenger, it’s courteous to offer to take over after a few hours in the car.

In episode 70, we talked how machines are taking over in the kitchen. That episode talked about restaurants where the meals are prepared entirely by robots—I warned you to get ready for the day when machines take over for people in the kitchen.

Now here’s another little twist you can put on “take over,” and that is to say, “take over from.” Remember, we use “take over for” when the first person voluntarily gives over his or her position or job. When you say “take over from” it sometimes implies the opposite. You know the fashion retailer H&M. A new CEO took over from a member of the founding family. The former CEO was a member of the family that started the business. And that person struggled in the face of competition from online retailers. So when I read that a new CEO took over from one of the founding family members, I suspected that maybe this wasn’t entirely voluntary. Maybe there was a little conflict here. The new CEO took over from one of the members of the family that started the business.

These are shades of gray with these words—it’s not always clear that “take over for” is voluntary and “take over from” is not voluntary. You might say that Conan O’Brien took over for Jay Leno, but those two comedians didn’t always get along. Likewise, I saw news that Netflix announced which actress will take over from Olivia Colman as the Queen in the series “The Crown.” The article said that the actress Imelda Staunton will take over from Olivia Colman as the Queen in season 5 of the show. Now clearly, in this case, there’s no rivalry. The character is getting much older, so they need a new actress. Imelda Staunton will take over from Olivia Colman—that’s just natural. So the lesson here is that the choice of either “take over for” or “take over from” doesn’t always tell you the circumstances, but it might sometimes give you a hint.

JR’s song of the week

Today’s song of the week is “When the Party’s Over” by Billie Eilish. She became the second artist—and the first female—ever to sweep the biggest four awards at the Grammy’s. Those would be best album, best record, best song of the year, and best new artist. When she was a kid, her mom told her that she could stay up as late as she wanted—as long as she was making music. JR’s favorite song by the eighteen-year-old Billie Eilish is “When the Party’s Over.

That’s all for today, thanks again as always for being with us. And thanks to Guillermo for suggesting today’s topic. Remember we’ll be back with another episode on Monday.

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