"take a decision" vs. "make a decision"

[Torsten]

Hi, where do you see the difference between "take a decision" and "make a decision"? I take it both are strong collocations? Running both phrases through the British National Corpus revealed the following:

"take a desicion": 27 results
"make a decision": 249 results

Prof. Google says:
"take decision": 870,000 entries
"make a desion": 15,400,000 entries

So, "make a decision" seems to be more popular but what exactly does this mean if anything?
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Yankee]

Hi Torsten

I think the meanings are essentially the same. I myself have never used "take a decision."

Amy
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Alan]

Hi Torsten,

I don't want to be a nitpicker but I can see a shade of difference between the two. Accepting that they both mean decide. Make a decision suggests make your mind up rather than as it were sit on the fence. Take a decison is make your mind up and follow through. The reason why I pick on this is that I hear the expression used as follows: A country takes the decision to go to war. And then the war starts.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Make or Do?

[Tom]

[Torsten]

Hi Tom,

I'm sure you know how to find the answer to your question? I mean you certainly know how to use Google?
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Torsten's right. The British National Corpus (BNC) is easy to find with Google. The BNC is a good resource for seeing how words and phrases are used in context/sentences in British English. This is where you can do your search:
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

This is what you can find regarding make/take a/the decision:

http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=Take+a+decision
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=make+a+decision
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=take+the+decision
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=make+the+decision

The American National Corpus is still being developed:
http://www.americannationalcorpus.org/about.html

By the way, I consider the use of 'take a decision' to be something you're more likely to hear in "British English" rather than in "American English".
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Harry Smiith]

[prezbucky]

"To make a decision" is way more common here in the US. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard "to take a decision" used in its place, though I could see where it might be acceptable (Alan's explanation).
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Robster]

I am a native speaker of British English, and the normal thing to say is "make a decision". Using "take a decision" seems to have become very common with the media and politicians in the last few years, but I've never heard anyone say it in conversation.

So if you are learning English "make a decision" is what you should say if you want to sound more native. If you were talking about yourself you could just say something like "i need to decide" eg "i need to decide which kind of chocolate cake I want for my party"

Hope this helps

[MrPedantic]

For me, "to make the decision" describes the act, while "to take the decision" also focuses on the responsibility.

MrP

[Haihao]

And my two cents is, "to make a decision" implies taking some efforts from his/her own will or need (to make a decision) while "to take a decision" just taking the responsibility or obligation from an external cause (to make a decision).