Word.ws English Dictionary

take it on the lam

take it on the lam verb: to escape.

Verb

take it on the lam

  1. (US, idiomatic, informal) To escape.
    • They didn't take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done.1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168

Origin of take it on the lam

From on the lam.

Questions about take it on the lam

What does take it on the lam mean?
Take it on the lam means to escape.
What part of speech is take it on the lam?
Take it on the lam is a verb.

Words near take it on the lam in the dictionary

  1. take it from me
  2. take it from the top
  3. take it in turns
  4. take it into one's head
  5. take it on the arches
  6. take it on the lam
  7. take it or leave it
  8. take it or leave it alone
  9. take it out in
  10. take it out of
  11. take it out on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take it on the lam (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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