word-choiceword-usage
used with a noun instead of using a verb to describe an action. For
example, if you take a walk, you walk somewhere
So "to take a walk" & "to walk" can be used interchangeably right or should they be used in different situations?
Ok, here is a saying in Hannah Montana
Hannah said "I'm taking a walk on the beach."
Is there any subtle difference if she said "I'm walking on the beach."
Actually, as the following Ngram Chart for the years 1980 through 2008 indicates, "walk the talk" (the grayish blue line) is considerably more common than "talks the talk and walks" (the regular blue line), "talk the talk and walk" (the red line), "walks the walk and talks" (the green line), "walk the walk and talk" (the yellow line), and "talk the walk" (the purple line) put together:
These results are for published instances of the various phrases in the Google Books database for each year, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the relative frequency of the various formulations in spoken English; but for published instances, the relative popularity of "walk the talk" is quite impressive. Evidently a lot of writers share the poster's opinion that "walk the talk" is a reasonable way to express the idea of "doing what you say you'll do or what you say you believe in."
I also want to support the point that 3nafish and Dan Bron make in their comments beneath the OP's question: It isn't illogical or beside the point to say that someone walks the walk and talks the talk (or talks the talk and walks the walk) because the implication in each case is that the person talks the appropriate talk and walks the appropriate walk.
Even "talk the walk" makes sense if you read it as meaning something comparable to the U.S. idiom "talk a good game"—that is, sound good but not necessarily do well. Many of the matches for "talk the walk" use that phrase in tandem with "walk the talk" to emphasize the value of communicating about what needs to be done before you shift to "walking the talk." But some of the riffs on "talk the walk" sounds like hooey to me, as in Karl E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations (1995):
To "talk the walk" is to be opportunistic in the best sense of the word. It is to search for words that make sense of current walking that is adaptive for reasons that are not yet clear.
I don't know about you, but I'm skipping that seminar.
The two words are not synonymous although they may sometimes appear to be so. It is a function of context. As a native speaker, I say we have no power at home when it is clear from the domestic context that we have no electricity. If I were in a car and said we have no power, I would mean we have no working engine or transmission. If in a ship driven by steam turbine, I would mean we have no steam or no transmission, unless I were referring to the electricity supply points, in which case I would mean we have no elecricity.
Best Answer
One would use "to take a walk" to emphasize that one is walking for walking's sake, roughly speaking. For example, "I've got some free time, so I'm taking a walk on the beach."
One would use "to walk" in contexts where one is merely describing the physical action of walking. For example, "I'm walking home."
Now, Dictionary.com does give a second sense of "to walk" as "to move about or travel on foot for exercise or pleasure" (here). This second sense of "to walk" would be the first sense of "to take a walk", if the dictionary had an entry for it.
What this means is that "to take a walk" more strongly suggests that the walking is being done for exercise or pleasure than "to walk."