take something to
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: takes something to
form: taking something to
form: took something to
form: taken something to
Senses: examples: text: A lot of officers when they knock off a still will take an axe to the barrels.
ref: 1973, Albert J. Reiss, The Police and the Public, page 44:
text: The last guy to take a mower to this place must have been General MacArthur. It was as bad as any course in the U.S., yet it cost $100 to play on Saturdays. Doesn't matter. The golfers started lining up at two in the morning.
ref: 1996, Sports Illustrated Editors, Golf, →ISBN:
text: Sometimes someone would take a wrench to a fire hydrant, jam a crate up to its nozzle, turning the whole of it into a fountain for us kids to splosh around and play in.
ref: 2009, John Ridley, A Conversation with the Mann:
text: It's quite something that I'm standing here with the door open, and that I'm thinking what fun it would be to take a trimmer to that grass and sort my plants from the weeds. That's progress—after all, I haven't got my hands dirty in[…]
ref: 2010 September 7, Rowan Coleman, The Home for Broken Hearts, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 334:
text: He recounted the story of a heretic who took a sword to a statue of Mary, which began to bleed. […]
ref: 2016 March 23, Scott K. Taylor, A Linking of Heaven and Earth: […] , Routledge, →ISBN:
text: It turns one of the dickheads Nick took a baseball bat to is the nephew of a hick cop on the force out there.
ref: 2017 May 8, Tamara Morgan, The World is a Stage, Tamara Morgan, →ISBN:
text: […] Theo took a scythe to the long grass in an attempt to transform the jungle into a more guest-friendly garden.
ref: 2019 March 21, Cathy Bramley, A Seaside Escape, Orion, →ISBN:
text: ... and I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to open it and take the film out of it, so I just took his camera and laid it down on the ground and took a baseball bat to it. That camera didn't work after I took the bat to it.
ref: 2020 November 10, Clyde Wright, Baseball the Wright Way, Page Publishing Inc, →ISBN:
text: "Fates, there were times when I honestly would've preferred to take a dagger to my ears than listen to him. But Kolis...he could be deceptively charming when he wanted to be. Enough that you started to relax around him, […]"
ref: 2022 November 15, Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Light in the Flame: A Flesh and Fire Novel, Blue Box Press, →ISBN:
text: Our Constitution was a blank sheet of paper before someone took a pencil to it.
ref: 2023 April 25, Scott Brickell, The Business Behind the Song: Navigating a Career in the Music Industry, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN:
glosses: To apply (some instrument or implement) to (something else, to undertake a task or attack upon it, usually vigorously).
examples: text: I used to do field lexicography, but then I took an arrow to the knee on North Sentinel Island.
glosses: To experience application of (some instrument or implement).
examples: Twitter took a major blow to its reputation
glosses: To suffer (an injury or detriment) to person or property.
examples: text: Let's take the presents to the community center.
text: And this from the bloke who took a phone to dinner in case we broke down on the way from the bedrooms to the dining room.
ref: 2012 February 17, Clare Revell, After the Fire, Pelican Ventures Book Group, →ISBN:
glosses: Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see take.
Related terms: take to