take lying down
take lying down verb: to endure without complaint or protest.
Verb
take lying down (third-person singular simple present takes lying down, present participle taking lying down, simple past took lying down, past participle taken lying down)
- To endure without complaint or protest.
- I don't know what they expect, but I am certainly not going to take this lying down.
- Thai police prevented a commemoration on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre from taking place outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, the event's young organizer, didn't take it lying down, though.2020 June 4, UCA News Reporter, “Thai activists get creative to mark Tianamen massacre”, in La Croix International, Bayard, archived from the original on 05 Jun 2020
Forms of take lying down
| third-person singular present | takes lying down |
|---|---|
| present participle | taking lying down |
| past | took lying down |
| past participle | taken lying down |
Questions about take lying down
- What does take lying down mean?
- Take lying down means to endure without complaint or protest.
- What part of speech is take lying down?
- Take lying down is a verb.
- What is the past tense of take lying down?
- The past tense of take lying down is took lying down.
Words near take lying down in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: take lying down (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 lying down.ogg.
Cite this entry: “take lying down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_lying_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.