Word.ws English Dictionary

take cover

take cover verb: to shelter oneself.

Verb

take cover (third-person singular simple present takes cover, present participle taking cover, simple past took cover, past participle taken cover)

  1. (also, figuratively, idiomatic) To shelter oneself.
    • Coordinate term: give cover
    • Can't you hear, can't your hear the thunder? / You better run, you better take cover1981, Men At Work, “Down Under”, in Business as Usual
    Synonyms:
    run for cover

Synonyms of take cover

Forms of take cover

third-person singular presenttakes cover
present participletaking cover
pasttook cover
past participletaken cover

Questions about take cover

What does take cover mean?
Take cover means to shelter oneself.
What part of speech is take cover?
Take cover is a verb.
What is the past tense of take cover?
The past tense of take cover is took cover.

Words near take cover in the dictionary

  1. take coals to Newcastle
  2. take cold
  3. take command
  4. take control
  5. take courage
  6. take cover
  7. take credit
  8. take delight in
  9. take delivery
  10. take down
  11. take down a notch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take cover (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-take cover.ogg.

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