Word.ws English Dictionary

take one's lumps

take one's lumps verb: to receive physical abuse and to survive.

Verb

take one's lumps (third-person singular simple present taking one's lumps, present participle took one's lumps, simple past and past participle taken one's lumps)

  1. (slang) To receive physical abuse and to survive.
    • When frustrated tacklers finally do catch up with him, Arnett knows how to take his lumps. "If I hit the ground tensely, rigidly, and two tons of angry linemen landed on top of me, they'd break every bone in my body."1960 December 5, “Artful Dodgers”, in Time
    Synonyms:
    tough it out
  2. (figuratively, slang) To endure through criticism or other adversity.
    • As is the case with so many outspoken civil libertarians, Chafee took his lumps. He was strongly criticized by several Harvard Law School graduates.1987, David Fellman, "A Renowned Civil Libertarian," (review of Zechariah Chafee, Jr.: Defender of Liberty and Law by Donald L. Smith), The Review of Politics, vol. 49, no. 3, p. 444

Synonyms of take one's lumps

Forms of take one's lumps

third-person singular presenttaking one's lumps
present participletook one's lumps
past participletaken one's lumps
pasttaken one's lumps

Questions about take one's lumps

What does take one's lumps mean?
Take one's lumps means to receive physical abuse and to survive.
What part of speech is take one's lumps?
Take one's lumps is a verb.
What is the past tense of take one's lumps?
The past tense of take one's lumps is taken one's lumps.

Words near take one's lumps in the dictionary

  1. take one's hook
  2. take one's kit off
  3. take one's leave
  4. take one's life
  5. take one's life in one's hands
  6. take one's lumps
  7. take one's medicine
  8. take one's own hide to market
  9. take one's own life
  10. take one's pick
  11. take one's place

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take one's lumps (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 one's lumps.ogg.

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