I admit, I lol’ed.
Heh, I can’t stop lol’ing actually.
Personal best thread ever. 
Moderator Note
Superhal, you can make your argument without resorting to so much snark and personal remarks. No warning issued, but let’s dial it back.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Though you’ll often find kits on their own, you’ll never see a caboodle without one.
Well.
Am I the only "Merkin who immediately thought of “writing an exam” upon reading this?
To Americans, if one can be said to “write an exam” at all, it is an action done by the teacher who designs the exam which the students will be tested with. To a Brit, I understand it to be a perfectly normal description of when the students do when the write down the answers to those questions.
In my opinion, it would be foolish to suggest that “write an exam” is acceptable grammar in England, but unacceptable grammar in the States. Rather, the grammar is acceptable in both places, but the usage is not found in the US. And by extension, “write a picture” would be acceptable grammar everywhere, but acceptable usage nowhere.
If you ever hear the phrase “Bay of Pigs” without the word “fiasco” attached, it is a geographic reference.
What? You don’t write an exam in the US? What do you do?
Take an exam.
We take an exam.
Which - I concede - makes no more sense than writing it.
Crazy Americans.
…“Invasion”, …“Incident”, …“Disaster”, …“Scandal”, or even just by itself to refer to the event (as in, “The Bay of Pigs was the low-water mark in Kennedy’s presidency”).
And Superhal, regardless of whether the meaning of “grammar” is such as to encompass “write a picture” as a grammatical mistake, it’s clearly not an example of what the OP is talking about. One might not be able to “write a picture”, but one can “write an article”, or “write a book”, or “write a story”, or “write a letter”, and so on: The word “write” can be associated with many, many other words. This is in contrast to the OP’s examples, where you can wreak havoc, but can’t wreak anything else.
And why do they call it taking a dump anyway? You’re not really taking it anywhere! [/beavis channelling Rooney]
We take or sit an exam in the UK in order to receive a grade for the given subject/course. I’ve never heard someone say “write an exam” to mean the same thing.
We write exams in Canada. I assumed we stole this from you lot. If that’s not the case then where did we get it from? It’s not like we’re very good at inventing our own dialect, eh?
I and others I know say “take a haircut.” It might be an Ashkenazi/Jewish/German language holdover.
Hmm. I also say “take a schvitz” (go to a steam bath).
My two-year-old “write-writes” perfectly good pictures*. Mostly on the walls, true, and in as permanent a medium** as she can find, but still… if you ask her, writing a picture is perfectly valid and natural.
I guess it’s the dopey hidden meanings that distinguish otherwise perfectly synonmous words (“draw”, “write”) that make learning to speak English fluently and idiomatically so unpleasant and confusing to immigrants and other second-language learners.
*Well, scribbles, but intended pictorially, not glyphically. I know this because she also "write-write"s words, at least according to her indignant reaction when I confuse her words with her pictures. She knows the difference; she just doesn’t care about the artificial distinction in verbs.
**Her favorite seems to be medium-point Sharpie. We keep throwing them away, and she keeps finding them. :mad:
By the way, I think the word we’re all looking for is not “grammar” or “syntax”, but a broader one: “usage”. Quoting:
[emphasis mine]
Word choice (e.g., “write” v. “draw”) is distinct from, and parallel to, grammar and syntax. Which is why “write a picture” is grammatically sound but erroneous from customary English usage.
And that’s the rub. “Customary” is subject to regional variation in ways grammar can only dream about. We’ve already seen the Canadian example of “write an exam”. Consider, too, the verb chosen to describe the actions of a politician seeking election: “standing” v. “running” for office.
No sane American teacher of English Grammar is going to insist that the UK usage of “standing for office” is grammatically incorrect. It’s non-standard usage within the US, but it’s the worst kind of chauvistic arrogance to proclaim that “my word choice is the only correct one!”
The Tick is nigh invulnerable.