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The care in 'taken cared of'

"Children involved in armed conflict are well taken cared of."

My ears tingle whenever I hear people use the phrase, "taken cared of." The correct form is "taken care of."

The sentence above should read: Children involved in armed conflict are well taken care of.

In this phrase, the word care should be in the affirmative form because it already has "taken" as the main verb. These verb phrase "taken care of" falls under the category of causative verbs.

According to the rule, causative verbs designate the action necessary to cause another action to happen. In "The problem has been taken care of." the verb "taken" causes the "care" to happen.

1 comments:

ME said...

My skin crawls when I hear people say taken cared of. If they want to use cared, then they should say they cared for someone or something.