Survey for verb phrases 'take air' and 'take the air'

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Recently I came across these two phrases — ‘to take air’ and ‘to take the air’ — in a book authored by an English professor in Mainland China

I’ve gone through Google and numbers of English-English dictionaries to look them up, only to get the meaning of the former — to go for a walk.
(See [url]Take the air[/url] - definition of take the air[/url] by The Free Dictionary )

With limited results, I decided to conduct the survey to solicit your opinions.

Below are the meanings of the two phrases extracted from the book. There are 5 responses at the bottom; please choose ONLY one of them.

Q: Which of the following verb phrases do you think is correct?

  1. to take air
    =>If a piece of info takes air, it becomes known to people.

EX: Since the official’s love affairs has taken air, there’s no use trying to cover it up.

  1. to tak the air
    => to take fresh air

EX: Getting up, he walked out of his house to take the air

Response

  1. The former is correct
  2. The latter is correct
  3. Both are correct
  4. Neither are correct
  5. I don’t know

Many thanks for your cooperation!

2

I choose #6. We don’t bow easily to demands here, Chingy.

3

Hi Chingy,

You have confused ‘former’ and ‘latter’.

As for the meanings of the phrases in question, it seems to me that the dictionaries have given you the definitions you need, and will provide a better indication of what is correct than a survey of opinion would.