Word.ws English Dictionary

ontake

ontake verb: to take on; undertake; assume.

Verb

ontake (third-person singular simple present ontakes, present participle ontaking, simple past ontook, past participle ontaken)

  1. (transitive) To take on; undertake; assume.
    • In 1413 he entered into a bond of manrent at Dundee, with the earl of Crawford, that he, the said Sir Patrick," is becumyn man of special retinue till the said earl, for the term of his life, nane ontaken but amitie and allegiance till our lord the king, [...]1862, William Anderson, The Scottish nation
  2. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To undertake a debt.

Noun

ontake (plural ontakes)

  1. A taking on; that which is taken on; acquisition.
    • [...] as only about 4 per cent of library ontake would be affected.1975, The Australian library journal, volume 24
    • In very faulted seam zones unduly high power ontakes of the plough drives showed that the set values were already too high.1982, Glückauf: Volume 118, Issues 19-24

Examples of ontake in a sentence

  • Ontake of existing data This is a step that can easily be underestimated both in its complexity and in the resources required.1988, R. P. Whittington, Database systems engineering:
  • In addition to intake, you may also need to address factors related to what I call “ontake.”2006, Don Nava, Fit after 40: 3 keys to looking good and feeling great - Page 74:

Forms of ontake

Verb
third-person singular presentontakes
present participleontaking
pastontook
past participleontaken
Noun
pluralontakes

Origin of ontake

From Middle English ontaken, equivalent to on- + take. Compare Old English onniman (“to receive, take”).

Words formed from ontake

  • ontake debt

Questions about ontake

What does ontake mean?
Ontake means to take on; undertake; assume.
How do you use ontake in a sentence?
Ontake of existing data This is a step that can easily be underestimated both in its complexity and in the resources required.
What part of speech is ontake?
Ontake can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of ontake?
The past tense of ontake is ontook.

Words near ontake in the dictionary

  1. onsweep
  2. onsweeping
  3. onsweeps
  4. ONT
  5. Ont.
  6. ontake
  7. ontaken
  8. ontakes
  9. Ontarian
  10. Ontarians
  11. Ontario

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ontake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ontake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ontake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.