Word.ws English Dictionary

take responsibility

take responsibility verb: to blame oneself for something; to acknowledge a fault.

Verb

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

  1. To blame oneself for something; to acknowledge a fault.
    • I take responsibility for my poor choice; it was my fault.
  2. To accept or take on an obligation or liability.
    • The new captain will take responsibility for the ship at the beginning of January.

Forms of take responsibility

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

Questions about take responsibility

What does take responsibility mean?
Take responsibility means to blame oneself for something; to acknowledge a fault.
What part of speech is take responsibility?
Take responsibility is a verb.
What is the past tense of take responsibility?
The past tense of take responsibility is took responsibility.

Words near take responsibility in the dictionary

  1. take possession
  2. take post
  3. take potluck
  4. take pride
  5. take refuge
  6. take responsibility
  7. take revenge
  8. take roll
  9. take root
  10. take serious
  11. take seriously

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take responsibility (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-take responsibility.ogg.

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