take for granted

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To assume something to be true without verification or proof.
   • Let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey.1839, Charles Dickens, chapter 17, in Oliver Twist
   • Most people take the imprint "Not Transferable" for granted when buying railway tickets, and are sufficiently law-abiding not to think of transferring a return half to a relation or friend.1959 September, N. Caplan, “Not Transferable”, in Railway Magazine, page 646
2. (especially, idiomatic, transitive) To give little attention to or to underestimate the value of; to fail to appreciate, especially something one has grown heavily accustomed to; not to value or care for appropriately, out of the assumption that the person or thing not valued cannot be lost.
   • These great First Truths, these good and gracious Tidings, these holy and humanizing Spells, in the preconformity to which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so infused, that it were but a tame and inadequate expression to say, we all take them for granted.1825, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion: […], London: […] Thomas Davison, […] for Taylor...
   • He had fiercely championed loveless ladies entering frustrated middle age, the married woman whose husband took her for granted and seldom into his arms.1946 November 25, “Posthumous Portrait”, in Time