Word.ws English Dictionary

taking a dive

taking a dive is the present participle and gerund of take a dive.

Meaning of take a dive

Verb

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

  1. To decline rapidly.
    • Other broad market gauges took even steeper dives, with the Standard & Poor's 500, which includes financial stocks, falling 9.93%.2008 December 1, John Curran, “The Recession Is Made Official — and Stocks Take a Dive”, in Time
  2. (idiomatic) To feign a knockout in order to lose intentionally.
    • I decided there could be a nice bit of irony in a situation where a boxer, with a crown his for the taking, deliberately takes a dive to get revenge on the man he hates, who is betting everything on the boxer's victory.1950, Jules Archer, I Sell What I Write, page 44
  3. (idiomatic) To lose or fail intentionally.

Questions about taking a dive

What is taking a dive the present participle and gerund of?
Taking a dive is the present participle and gerund of take a dive.

Words near taking a dive in the dictionary

  1. taking a crap
  2. taking a decision
  3. taking a deep breath
  4. taking a dim view of
  5. taking a dip
  6. taking a dive
  7. taking a dookie
  8. taking a dump
  9. taking a fall
  10. taking a fall out of
  11. taking a fancy to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taking a dive (page history and authors); take a dive (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: “taking a dive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/taking_a_dive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.