take at face value
take at face value verb: accept as presented, without question or further investigation.
Verb
take at face value (third-person singular simple present takes at face value, present participle taking at face value, simple past took at face value, past participle taken at face value)
- Accept as presented, without question or further investigation.
- Our parents’ generation seems neither able nor interested in understanding how marketers exploit them. They take shopping at face value.1991, Douglas Coupland, “New Zealand Gets Nuked, Too”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC, page 68
- Synonyms:
- take on trust, take on faith
- Antonyms:
- take with a grain of salt, read between the lines
Synonyms of take at face value
Antonyms
- take with a grain of salt
- read between the lines
Forms of take at face value
| third-person singular present | takes at face value |
|---|---|
| present participle | taking at face value |
| past | took at face value |
| past participle | taken at face value |
| alternative form | accept at face value |
Questions about take at face value
- What does take at face value mean?
- Take at face value means accept as presented, without question or further investigation.
- What part of speech is take at face value?
- Take at face value is a verb.
- What is the past tense of take at face value?
- The past tense of take at face value is took at face value.
Words near take at face value in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: take at face value (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.
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Cite this entry: “take at face value.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_at_face_value. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.