take something to
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]take something to (third-person singular simple present takes (something) to, present participle taking (something) to, simple past took (something) to, past participle taken (something) to)
- To apply (some instrument or implement) to (something else, to undertake a task or attack upon it, usually vigorously).
- 1973, Albert J. Reiss, The Police and the Public, page 44:
- A lot of officers when they knock off a still will take an axe to the barrels.
- 1996, Sports Illustrated Editors, Golf, →ISBN:
- 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.
- 2009, John Ridley, A Conversation with the Mann:
- 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.
- 2010 September 7, Rowan Coleman, The Home for Broken Hearts, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 334:
- 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 […]
- 2016 March 23, Scott K. Taylor, A Linking of Heaven and Earth: […] , Routledge, →ISBN:
- He recounted the story of a heretic who took a sword to a statue of Mary, which began to bleed. […]
- 2017 May 8, Tamara Morgan, The World is a Stage, Tamara Morgan, →ISBN:
- It turns one of the dickheads Nick took a baseball bat to is the nephew of a hick cop on the force out there.
- 2019 March 21, Cathy Bramley, A Seaside Escape, Orion, →ISBN:
- […] Theo took a scythe to the long grass in an attempt to transform the jungle into a more guest-friendly garden.
- 2020 November 10, Clyde Wright, Baseball the Wright Way, Page Publishing Inc, →ISBN:
- ... 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.
- 2022 November 15, Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Light in the Flame: A Flesh and Fire Novel, Blue Box Press, →ISBN:
- "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, […]"
- 2023 April 25, Scott Brickell, The Business Behind the Song: Navigating a Career in the Music Industry, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN:
- Our Constitution was a blank sheet of paper before someone took a pencil to it.
- To experience application of (some instrument or implement).
- I used to do field lexicography, but then I took an arrow to the knee on North Sentinel Island.
- To suffer (an injury or detriment) to person or property.
- Twitter took a major blow to its reputation
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see take.
- Let's take the presents to the community center.
- 2012 February 17, Clare Revell, After the Fire, Pelican Ventures Book Group, →ISBN:
- 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.