To start a new hobby or activity; or to occupy space or time.
To begin doing a new hobby, sport, or activity, especially one you plan to continue; or to fill or use an amount of space or time.
Type
Separable
Collocations
take up a hobby — start a new activity
take up space — occupy physical room
take up a challenge — accept something difficult
⚠️ Watch out
Don't confuse with 'take on' (which relates to responsibilities) — 'take up' is specifically for starting activities or occupying space/time.
Training for TOEFL & fluency
🎧 Listen · write what you hear · 👁 reveal to compare
In 1962, at the age of thirty-one, Vera Rubin was already a working astronomer, but she was looking for a research problem she could call entirely her own. {{Deliberately|adjective|medium}} avoiding the crowded, {{competitive|adjective|easy}} field of quasars, she chose to take up the study of galaxy rotation curves — how fast stars orbit the centre of a galaxy at varying distances. It was considered {{unglamorous|adjective|hard}}, almost peripheral. Working with instrument builder Kent Ford at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Rubin began {{measuring|verb-various-tenses|easy}} the rotational speeds of the Andromeda Galaxy in painstaking detail. The data that came back was deeply strange: stars at the outer edges of galaxies were moving far too fast. By the early 1970s, Rubin and Ford had enough observations across dozens of galaxies to {{assert|verb-various-tenses|medium}} that most of the matter in the universe is invisible — what we now call dark matter. What she {{took up|phrasal-verb|medium}} almost as a quiet retreat from academic rivalry turned out to be one of the most consequential research programs of the twentieth century. {{So|connective|easy}}, the lesson is clear: {{sometimes|connective|medium}} the activity you take up out of curiosity {{reshapes|verb-various-tenses|hard}} everything around it — {{indeed|connective|hard}}, more than she ever expected.
To start or pursue an activity means to begin engaging with a new hobby, interest, or skill and to continue developing it over time. It implies a deliberate choice to commit to something new in one's personal or professional life.
Type
Transitive verb phrase
Collocations
start a new hobby — the most common neutral collocation, used when beginning a leisure activity for the first time
start learning — frequently paired with a skill, e.g. 'start learning an instrument'
pursue an interest — slightly more formal within neutral range; implies sustained effort
pursue a passion — common in personal essays and LinkedIn content; suggests deeper motivation
start something new — informal but neutral; often used as a general encouragement phrase
⚠️ Watch out
Be cautious about using 'pursue' alone without a clear object, as it can sound vague or overly abstract in neutral contexts — always pair it with a specific activity or interest. 'Start' is slightly more casual than 'pursue,' so mixing them inconsistently within the same text can cause a minor tonal shift.
Training for TOEFL & fluency
🎧 Listen · write what you hear · 👁 reveal to compare
Marcus had spent three years saying he would eventually start playing chess. He followed tournaments online, watched analysis videos during his lunch break, and bookmarked tutorials he never opened. Then a colleague mentioned a local club that welcomed complete beginners, and something clicked. He walked in on a Tuesday evening not knowing anyone and left two hours later with a borrowed book and a game already arranged for the following week. Within a month, Marcus was genuinely hooked. He hadn't expected to pursue it so seriously, but the strategy, the patience, and the quiet focus it required felt like exactly what he had been missing. He stopped saying 'eventually' and started just showing up.
For most of his adult life, Daniel Osei had described himself as someone who wasn't particularly creative. He worked in logistics, spent his evenings watching sport, and had never thought seriously about art in any form. That changed on a Wednesday afternoon in March, when a work wellness initiative encouraged employees to start a new activity outside their usual routine.
Daniel signed up for a six-week watercolour class at his local community centre, mostly because it was free and the timing suited him. He expected to endure it. Instead, he found himself lingering after sessions, asking the instructor questions, and spending Saturday mornings at his kitchen table with brushes he had bought himself.
By summer, colleagues had noticed something different about him — a kind of quiet energy that hadn't been there before. His manager asked what had changed. Daniel laughed and said he had simply decided to pursue something with no practical purpose whatsoever, and it had turned out to be the most useful thing he had ever done.
His story isn't unusual. Across the country, people are discovering that choosing to start a creative or skill-based activity later in life can reshape how they see themselves — not just as professionals or parents, but as people still capable of genuine surprise.
In professional contexts, 'commence / adopt' means to formally begin a new practice, initiative, or structured activity within an organisation. It implies a deliberate, sanctioned decision to introduce and take on something new at an institutional or individual professional level.
Type
Transitive verb phrase (formal register; 'commence' and 'adopt' function as near-synonymous alternatives depending on nuance: 'commence' emphasises beginning, 'adopt' emphasises taking on formally)
Collocations
commence / adopt a programme — used when an organisation formally begins a structured initiative
commence / adopt a practice — refers to introducing a new professional habit or working method
commence / adopt responsibilities — used when an individual takes on new duties or roles
commence / adopt an initiative — common in reports and strategic communications
formally commence / adopt — adds emphasis to the official or sanctioned nature of the action
⚠️ Watch out
Avoid using 'commence' and 'adopt' interchangeably without considering nuance: 'commence' best fits contexts where timing and starting point matter, while 'adopt' suits contexts where the focus is on formally taking on a method or role. Using either word in casual internal conversation may sound overly stiff — reserve them for written communications, formal meetings, and official documents.
Training for TOEFL & fluency
🎧 Listen · write what you hear · 👁 reveal to compare
When Miriam joined Hartwell Consulting as a newly promoted associate director, her line manager encouraged her to commence / adopt a structured public speaking programme offered through the firm's professional development fund. Miriam had always avoided presentations, preferring to work quietly behind the scenes, but she recognised this was the right moment to invest in herself. Within three months, she had delivered two internal seminars and volunteered to lead a client workshop. Her colleagues noticed the transformation immediately. By year-end, Miriam had been asked to commence / adopt a mentoring role, guiding two junior analysts through their own development plans — something she would never have imagined when she first walked through the door.
The announcement arrived on a Tuesday morning, tucked between a calendar reminder and a quarterly budget update — easy to overlook, but impossible to ignore for those who read it carefully. Hartwell & Associates was launching a new Professional Growth Accelerator, and every employee at senior associate level or above was expected to commence / adopt at least one structured development activity within the first sixty days of the programme's rollout.
For Daniel Osei, Head of Client Strategy, it felt less like an obligation and more like an opportunity he had quietly been waiting for. He had long been curious about data visualisation — not as a technical exercise, but as a way of telling better stories in client presentations. He registered for the firm's internal analytics workshop series the same afternoon the announcement landed.
Over the following weeks, Daniel arrived early on Thursdays, notebook open, working through concepts he had previously left to his analyst team. His manager took notice. By the mid-year review, she recommended that Daniel formally commence / adopt a cross-departmental knowledge-sharing role, bridging the gap between strategy and data science — a role that had not existed at Hartwell before, but suddenly seemed entirely necessary.
In academic English, 'engage in' or 'embark upon' refers to the act of formally commencing or initiating involvement in a new pursuit, discipline, or structured activity. These expressions carry a sense of deliberate, purposeful commitment that is appropriate for scholarly discourse.
Type
Verb phrase (transitive: 'engage in' + noun phrase; 'embark upon' + noun phrase)
Collocations
engage in systematic inquiry — used when describing the commencement of structured research or investigation
embark upon an interdisciplinary programme — collocates naturally with academic or institutional undertakings
engage in sustained practice — emphasises duration and commitment following initiation
embark upon a longitudinal study — common in research methodology sections to signal the launch of extended investigation
engage in reflective learning — frequently used in educational and pedagogical scholarship
⚠️ Watch out
A common error is treating 'embark upon' as interchangeable with 'engage in' in all syntactic contexts: 'embark upon' typically introduces a new, defined undertaking and sounds most natural before nouns like 'study', 'programme', or 'pursuit', whereas 'engage in' collocates more freely with ongoing processes and activities. Avoid using either expression with highly colloquial or transient activities, as this creates a register mismatch that undermines scholarly credibility.
Training for TOEFL & fluency
🎧 Listen · write what you hear · 👁 reveal to compare
Dr Hana Morita had spent two decades studying neuroplasticity, yet she had never considered applying her own findings to her personal life. It was only after presenting at a conference in Vienna that a colleague's question prompted her to reflect: was she herself willing to embark upon something genuinely new? That autumn, she decided to engage in classical piano practice, treating it as both a personal experiment and a form of embodied research. She logged her progress meticulously. Months later, reviewing her own data, she recognised something unexpected — the discipline had quietly reshaped her thinking as a scholar.
The relationship between voluntary intellectual challenge and adult cognitive vitality has attracted increasing scholarly attention over the past two decades. While early models of cognitive ageing emphasised decline as an inevitable trajectory, more recent frameworks — particularly those informed by cognitive reserve theory — suggest that the brain retains a meaningful capacity for adaptive reorganisation well into later life, provided that it is consistently exposed to novel and demanding input. Central to this emerging body of evidence is the observation that individuals who choose to engage in new structured disciplines, whether musical, linguistic, or scientific in nature, demonstrate measurably different neurological profiles compared to those who maintain stable, familiar routines.
What remains less well understood, however, is the precise constellation of psychological and environmental conditions that leads an individual to embark upon such a pursuit in the first place. Motivation alone appears insufficient as an explanatory variable; studies consistently show that access, social modelling, and perceived institutional legitimacy all exert independent effects on initiation behaviour. The implication for researchers and policymakers alike is clear: understanding the decision to begin a new intellectual activity is as important as understanding its effects. Future work must therefore attend as carefully to the conditions of entry as to the outcomes of sustained participation.