take the liberty
take the liberty verb: to act on one's own authority, without asking for permission.
Verb
take the liberty (third-person singular simple present takes the liberty, present participle taking the liberty, simple past took the liberty, past participle taken the liberty)
- To act on one's own authority, without asking for permission.
- I took the liberty of adding your name to the list.
- —What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about ...? / —Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are. / —Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 12: Cyclops]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
Forms of take the liberty
| third-person singular present | takes the liberty |
|---|---|
| present participle | taking the liberty |
| past | took the liberty |
| past participle | taken the liberty |
Questions about take the liberty
- What does take the liberty mean?
- Take the liberty means to act on one's own authority, without asking for permission.
- What part of speech is take the liberty?
- Take the liberty is a verb.
- What is the past tense of take the liberty?
- The past tense of take the liberty is took the liberty.
Words near take the liberty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: take the liberty (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 the liberty.ogg.
Cite this entry: “take the liberty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_the_liberty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.