Word.ws English Dictionary

take lightly

take lightly verb: to treat casually, without seriousness or worry.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To treat casually, without seriousness or worry.
    • Following England's opening-day win over Wales in Cardiff, Martin Johnson's men headed into the Twickenham contest full of confidence but with a warning from their manager not to take the Italians lightly.2011 February 12, Mark Orlovac, “England 59-13 Italy”, in BBC
    Synonyms:
    make light of
    Antonyms:
    take seriously

Synonyms of take lightly

Antonyms

Forms of take lightly

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

Questions about take lightly

What does take lightly mean?
Take lightly means to treat casually, without seriousness or worry.
What part of speech is take lightly?
Take lightly is a verb.
What is the past tense of take lightly?
The past tense of take lightly is took lightly.

Words near take lightly in the dictionary

  1. take L's
  2. take law into one's own hands
  3. take leave
  4. take leave of one's senses
  5. take liberties
  6. take lightly
  7. take long
  8. take lying down
  9. take matters into one's own hands
  10. take no for an answer
  11. take no notice of

Source and license

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

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