See take its course on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "takes its course",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "taking its course",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "took its course",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "taken its course",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "<,,took,taken>"
},
"expansion": "take its course (third-person singular simple present takes its course, present participle taking its course, simple past took its course, past participle taken its course)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
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"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
289,
304
]
],
"ref": "2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:",
"text": "Fortunately, Frank had devised a cool way of getting down the seemingly endless staircase. He’d found an old laundry basket, and with felt-tip pens had painted it with the colours of Queenie – red, white and blue. All he had to do was sit at the top of the staircase, and then let gravity take its course.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
"ref": "2026 February 19, Jamie Grierson, Rajeev Syal, Vikram Dodd, “King says ‘law must take its course’ after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "King Charles has insisted “the law must take its course” after detectives took the unprecedented step of arresting his brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To progress in a natural manner without interference."
],
"id": "en-take_its_course-en-verb-CzBB7Qtu",
"links": [
[
"progress",
"progress"
],
[
"interference",
"interference"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "run its course"
}
]
}
],
"word": "take its course"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "takes its course",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "taking its course",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "took its course",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "taken its course",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "<,,took,taken>"
},
"expansion": "take its course (third-person singular simple present takes its course, present participle taking its course, simple past took its course, past participle taken its course)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
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[
289,
304
]
],
"ref": "2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:",
"text": "Fortunately, Frank had devised a cool way of getting down the seemingly endless staircase. He’d found an old laundry basket, and with felt-tip pens had painted it with the colours of Queenie – red, white and blue. All he had to do was sit at the top of the staircase, and then let gravity take its course.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
40,
55
]
],
"ref": "2026 February 19, Jamie Grierson, Rajeev Syal, Vikram Dodd, “King says ‘law must take its course’ after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "King Charles has insisted “the law must take its course” after detectives took the unprecedented step of arresting his brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To progress in a natural manner without interference."
],
"links": [
[
"progress",
"progress"
],
[
"interference",
"interference"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "run its course"
}
]
}
],
"word": "take its course"
}
Download raw JSONL data for take its course meaning in All languages combined (2.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (d6fca27 and 65e1673). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.