Word.ws English Dictionary

taken by surprise

taken by surprise is the past participle of take by surprise.

Meaning of take by surprise

Verb

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

  1. To occur to someone when unexpected; to surprise.
    • Kazakhstan's shooting team was taken by surprise when a spoof national anthem from the film Borat was used at a medal ceremony in Kuwait.2012 March 23, Barry Neild, “Borat's version of Kazakh anthem played at Kuwait medal ceremony”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about taken by surprise

What is taken by surprise the past participle of?
Taken by surprise is the past participle of take by surprise.

Words near taken by surprise in the dictionary

  1. taken away from
  2. taken back
  3. taken bread and salt
  4. taken breath
  5. taken by storm
  6. taken by surprise
  7. taken care
  8. taken care of
  9. taken care of business
  10. taken charge
  11. taken check

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taken by surprise (page history and authors); take by surprise (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: “taken by surprise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/taken_by_surprise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.