Learn English – take time to do something / doing something

grammaticalitysentence-usage

While in New York he took time to visit some friends.

This is an example of the phrase take time to do something from Longman Dictionary.

My question is, can we also say While in New York he took time visiting some friends? Is that also grammatically correct?

Best Answer

The idiomatic phrase is to take the time to do something which means:

to spend enough time to do something well or carefully:

  • She didn’t even take the time to say goodbye. (Cambridge)

Gngram finds no instance of "take (the) time visiting".

However, you can certainly spend (some) time doing something:

To "spend time ___ing" means to use your time to do it. You use the word "spend" with time because we think of time as being very valuable, just like money.

  • We spent the first month just debating what to call ourselves. (Phrasemix)
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