“What about Mama? Will you call her Mom? Billy nodded slowly. “We can
tell her together when she comes home from school.? They fell silent.
Billy chose another cookie and bit into it. He looked at Papa,
taking him in. It was strange—Billy wanted to call him Dad, but he
still thought of him as Papa.
The above paragraph is from The Year of Billy Miller on page 96. I am not very sure the meaning of 'take him in' in the bold sentence. There are two explanations on Thefreedictionary.com, to cheat or deceive someone and to give shelter to someone. But I don't think these two explanations are good enough to explain the meaning of the sentence.
Personally, I think 'take him in' here is to emphasize the way that the boy, Billy, looked at his father, which means he looked his father and brought his father's image into his mind.
Am I right?
Best Answer
the phrasal verb to take someone/something in has a surprising amount of flexibility in its usages, not just the two you mentioned.
For example, it can mean:
to understand and remember something that you hear or read
to allow someone to stay in your house or your country
to trick someone into believing something that is not true
to alter an item of clothing so that it fits you.
to accept something as real or true
to do work for someone else in your home
to go to an entertainment or sport
to furl a sail.
to receive a specified amount of money as payment or earnings.
to spend time looking at something
The usage you are looking for is a variation of the last one - to spend time looking at someone. In the context of taking in another person in this manner, it generally means more than simply looking at them - there's an element of getting a measure of that person involved, or looking at them more carefully or in a new light than one normally would, which seems to fit the case here.