"Paul is struggling with his detractors, famous pedants with whom several of his friends were once in touch."
Feminine substantive of the verb "to take" (from the Latin "prendere", "to seize"), the word "take" appears in the 12th century to speak of the action of capturing a person or an animal, of seizing something, we read in the
Dictionary of the French Academy
.
So we are talking about a hostage-taking, or the capture of a city.
La Prize d'Orange
, for example, is a famous medieval chanson de geste which recounts the victory of William of Orange over the Saracens.
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The term also indicates the action or the result of verbal expressions constructed with "to take", such as "to take a position" or even "to take the beak".
Example:
“His position on the subject is the subject of a real spat.”
Like "letting go", qualifying the fact of abandoning self-control, expressions are also directly constructed with the noun.
This is the case of “being in touch with”.
The latter designates the fact of being in contact with someone or something.
Used with “on”, it takes on the same meaning, but implies the exercise of pressure.
It will be said in particular that the diary is "in touch with" reality, that is to say that it shapes it, or that the teacher "is in touch (with or on, according to his pedagogical point of view)" His students.
From contact to combat
Being in touch with someone can sometimes lead to confrontation.
Also, it is said of people who fight with arms or who confront each other in a game, that they are "in the grip" or that they "put in the grip".
"Hands fell on faces, a general fistfight brought the madmen to grips"
, wrote Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé in
The Dead Who Speak
, in 1899.
To read also“Being at the top” or “be at the point”: do not make the mistake anymore!
It was in 1580, in Montaigne's famous
Essays
, that the first occurrence of the expression "being at grips with" is observed, in its figurative sense.
Used in this case to talk about the disease, it is about being in the fight against or having to face something, as we can read in the
Trésor de la langue française
.
“To struggle with awkwardness”
, for example, qualifies the fact of confronting this characteristic.
"The long complicity of men grappling with their destiny"
, said Camus...
