Word.ws English Dictionary

take one for the team

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

take one for the team verb: to accept some chore, hardship, or punishment for the sake of one's friends or colleagues.

Verb

take one for the team (third-person singular simple present takes one for the team, present participle taking one for the team, simple past took one for the team, past participle taken one for the team)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To accept some chore, hardship, or punishment for the sake of one's friends or colleagues.
    • [Casey Newton:] Yes, Arijeta, you really did take one for the team on this one, I have to say.2026 March 6, Kevin Roose, Casey Newton, “OpenAI’s Fog of War + Betting on Iran + Hard Fork Review of Slop”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of take one for the team

third-person singular presenttakes one for the team
present participletaking one for the team
pasttook one for the team
past participletaken one for the team

Origin of take one for the team

By analogy with a player making a sacrifice for the benefit of the sports team.

Questions about take one for the team

What does take one for the team mean?
Take one for the team means to accept some chore, hardship, or punishment for the sake of one's friends or colleagues.
What part of speech is take one for the team?
Take one for the team is a verb.
What is the past tense of take one for the team?
The past tense of take one for the team is took one for the team.

Words near take one for the team in the dictionary

  1. take on strength
  2. take on the chin
  3. take on trust
  4. take on water
  5. take one day at a time
  6. take one for the team
  7. take one up
  8. take one's ball and go home
  9. take one's bat and ball and go home
  10. take one's best shot
  11. take one's business elsewhere

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take one for the team (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-us-ncalif-takeonefortheteam.ogg, En-au-take one for the team.ogg.

Cite this entry: “take one for the team.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_one_for_the_team. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.