Word.ws English Dictionary

take vows

take vows verb: to become an officially inducted member of a religious order, such as an order of priests, nuns, or monks.

Verb

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

  1. To become an officially inducted member of a religious order, such as an order of priests, nuns, or monks.
    • And this was the hour Brother Jacques had planned and waited for! For this moment he had donned the robes, isolated himself, taken vows, suffered physical tortures!1903, Harold MacGrath, chapter 34, in The Grey Cloak
    • "Even painters ... try to make all women look like some wife or mistress. You are all the same; you never see our real faces. ... I'd rather take vows and veil my face for ever from such abominable eyes."1919, Willa Cather, Scandal

Forms of take vows

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

Questions about take vows

What does take vows mean?
Take vows means to become an officially inducted member of a religious order, such as an order of priests, nuns, or monks.
What part of speech is take vows?
Take vows is a verb.
What is the past tense of take vows?
The past tense of take vows is took vows.

Words near take vows in the dictionary

  1. take up the running
  2. take up the slack
  3. take up with
  4. take upon oneself
  5. take ups
  6. take vows
  7. take water
  8. take wind
  9. take wing
  10. take with
  11. take your change out of that

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take vows (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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