Hi Phew, Sentence 1 is not correct in English. Do you mean 'take place'? You can say "the meeting took place". This means "the meeting happened". Sentence 2 is possible as it means "to occupy the time or space" as you said. However, it is more common to say "the meeting took two hours". Please be aware that 'take up' can sometimes have a negative meaning. For example, if an employee is annoyed because he spends so much time in meetings, he might say "these meetings take up too much of my time!". Please let me know if you have any questions. Jamie (www.italki.com/jamie.teacher)

Thank you all! I learned a lot. :)

Agree. The first one is strange. The second one is ok, but would be better as just "took two hours". You might say "took up" if there was a bit more to the sentence. For example "the meeting took up two hours of her time" Here's some examples of took up: - The hobby took up all of her free time (she spent all her free time on it) - She took up the hobby because she likes it (she started doing the hobby because...)

Hi. I’m a native English speaker from the United States, and I’ve never heard the phrase “the meeting just took up”. Over here, we’d say “the meeting just *started up*”. This page has a list of uses for “take up”: https://www.woodwardenglish.com/lesson/take-up-phrasal-verb-meanings-examples/ . None of them seem to fit your sentence.

I don't think that #1 makes sense either. I would say "the meeting just started" if the meeting started suddenly (although I can't think of when I'd need to say something like that), or "the meeting has just started" if I'm telling someone that the meeting began recently.