Word.ws English Dictionary

take under

take under verb: to bring to insolvency; to drive (a business) into financial distress.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To bring to insolvency; to drive (a business) into financial distress.
    • I knew she didn’t have to be here, out in the sun with me trying to do whatever I could to keep this fire from taking the business under, but she was2021, Meka James, Heat of Love
    • The costs associated with Patagonia's shift to organic material nearly took the company under, but given the company values, it almost had no choice.2015, Carole and David Schwinn, The Transformative Workplace

Forms of take under

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

Questions about take under

What does take under mean?
Take under means to bring to insolvency; to drive (a business) into financial distress.
What part of speech is take under?
Take under is a verb.
What is the past tense of take under?
The past tense of take under is took under.

Words near take under in the dictionary

  1. take to the streets
  2. take to wife
  3. take too far
  4. take turns
  5. take umbrage
  6. take under
  7. take under advisement
  8. take underwing
  9. take up
  10. take up a collection
  11. take up arms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take under (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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Cite this entry: “take under.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_under. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.