"take to task" meaning in All languages combined

See take to task on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: En-au-take to task.ogg [Australia] Forms: takes to task [present, singular, third-person], taking to task [participle, present], took to task [past], taken to task [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|take<,,took,taken> to task}} take to task (third-person singular simple present takes to task, present participle taking to task, simple past took to task, past participle taken to task)
  1. (idiomatic) To lecture, berate, admonish, or hold somebody accountable for his or her actions. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: reproach, upbraid, attask Related terms: hold to account

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for take to task meaning in All languages combined (3.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes to task",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking to task",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took to task",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken to task",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> to task"
      },
      "expansion": "take to task (third-person singular simple present takes to task, present participle taking to task, simple past took to task, past participle taken to task)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
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          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1909, John Kendrick Bangs, chapter 3, in The Autobiography of Methuselah",
          "text": "[W]hen any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the old settlers as to what was or was not good form.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1948 January and February, “Memoirs of Archibald Sturrock”, in Railway Magazine, page 47",
          "text": "A dozen similar, but smaller footwarmers were made at Doncaster, without official sanction, and placed in the coaches of a train conveying some of the directors to London. Sturrock was taken to task by the chairman for having incurred this unauthorised expenditure, but before he left the meeting, the directors had ordered 200 footwarmers for public use.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1963 July, “News and Comment: Dr. Beeching's overstatement”, in Modern Railways, page 3",
          "text": "In a closely reasoned article in The Guardian, Mr. D. L. Munby, Oxford University's Reader in the Economics and Organisation of Transport, has taken Dr. Beeching to task for overstating his case for withdrawing stopping train services as money-losers.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To lecture, berate, admonish, or hold somebody accountable for his or her actions."
      ],
      "id": "en-take_to_task-en-verb-IkM4AZ3o",
      "links": [
        [
          "lecture",
          "lecture"
        ],
        [
          "berate",
          "berate"
        ],
        [
          "admonish",
          "admonish"
        ],
        [
          "accountable",
          "accountable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To lecture, berate, admonish, or hold somebody accountable for his or her actions."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "hold to account"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "reproach"
        },
        {
          "word": "upbraid"
        },
        {
          "word": "attask"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
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    {
      "audio": "En-au-take to task.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d6/En-au-take_to_task.ogg/En-au-take_to_task.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/En-au-take_to_task.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take to task"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes to task",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking to task",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took to task",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken to task",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> to task"
      },
      "expansion": "take to task (third-person singular simple present takes to task, present participle taking to task, simple past took to task, past participle taken to task)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "hold to account"
    }
  ],
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      "categories": [
        "English alliterative phrases",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1909, John Kendrick Bangs, chapter 3, in The Autobiography of Methuselah",
          "text": "[W]hen any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the old settlers as to what was or was not good form.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1948 January and February, “Memoirs of Archibald Sturrock”, in Railway Magazine, page 47",
          "text": "A dozen similar, but smaller footwarmers were made at Doncaster, without official sanction, and placed in the coaches of a train conveying some of the directors to London. Sturrock was taken to task by the chairman for having incurred this unauthorised expenditure, but before he left the meeting, the directors had ordered 200 footwarmers for public use.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1963 July, “News and Comment: Dr. Beeching's overstatement”, in Modern Railways, page 3",
          "text": "In a closely reasoned article in The Guardian, Mr. D. L. Munby, Oxford University's Reader in the Economics and Organisation of Transport, has taken Dr. Beeching to task for overstating his case for withdrawing stopping train services as money-losers.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To lecture, berate, admonish, or hold somebody accountable for his or her actions."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "lecture",
          "lecture"
        ],
        [
          "berate",
          "berate"
        ],
        [
          "admonish",
          "admonish"
        ],
        [
          "accountable",
          "accountable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To lecture, berate, admonish, or hold somebody accountable for his or her actions."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-take to task.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d6/En-au-take_to_task.ogg/En-au-take_to_task.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/En-au-take_to_task.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "reproach"
    },
    {
      "word": "upbraid"
    },
    {
      "word": "attask"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take to task"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (a644e18 and edd475d). 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.