Different Meanings of 'Make' in Everyday

Speech

Imagine you are watching the 1991 American film City Slickers. It tells the story of an
unhappy man and two of his friends. The men agree they need a short break from their day-
to-day problems. So they decide to go on a trip to the southwestern United States.

In the movie, you hear the following lines:

"When you're a teenager, you think you can do anything – and you do. Your twenties are a
blur. Thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself,
'What happened to my twenties?"

Our report today is not about aging. Instead, it is about a strange verb: make.

Have you ever wondered about the verb make? Have you noticed that it has different
meanings in different situations?

On Everyday Grammar, we will explore three meanings of the word make. We will learn
how make has different meanings depending on the noun phrase that follows it in a
sentence.

The verb make

Make is an irregular verb. Unlike many other verbs, the past tense is not formed by adding
an –ed at the end. Instead, the past tense is made.

The literal meaning of make is "to produce or create something." However, this meaning is
not common in everyday speech.

Instead, English speakers often use make to suggest different meanings. They show these
meanings by using one of a number of noun phrases after the verb.

Together, these make+noun phrase structures have an idiomatic meaning. In other words,
the structure make+ a noun phrase often has a meaning other than what the individual
words suggest.

There are many different meanings of the structure make+ a noun phrase.
Two grammar experts, Susan Conrad and Douglas Biber, have identified over one dozen
commonly-used make + noun phrase expressions!

Today, we will study three of them. These structures are all polite and can be used in
almost any situation – at school, at work, or among friends and family.