Word.ws English Dictionary

take one's cue from

take one's cue from verb: to copy; to do something in the same way as.

Verb

take one's cue from (third-person singular simple present takes one's cue from, present participle taking one's cue from, simple past took one's cue from, past participle taken one's cue from)

  1. To copy; to do something in the same way as.
    • She yanked her head over her shoulder and, taking her cue from the rat in the laboratory, she sank her teeth into Burt’s arm as hard as she could.2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN

Forms of take one's cue from

third-person singular presenttakes one's cue from
present participletaking one's cue from
pasttook one's cue from
past participletaken one's cue from

Questions about take one's cue from

What does take one's cue from mean?
Take one's cue from means to copy; to do something in the same way as.
What part of speech is take one's cue from?
Take one's cue from is a verb.
What is the past tense of take one's cue from?
The past tense of take one's cue from is took one's cue from.

Words near take one's cue from in the dictionary

  1. take one's best shot
  2. take one's business elsewhere
  3. take one's chance
  4. take one's chances
  5. take one's courage in both hands
  6. take one's cue from
  7. take one's custom elsewhere
  8. take one's ease
  9. take one's eye off the ball
  10. take one's eyes off
  11. take one's eyes off the ball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take one's cue from (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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