Word.ws English Dictionary

taking leave of one's senses

taking leave of one's senses is the present participle and gerund of take leave of one's senses.

Meaning of take leave of one's senses

Verb

take leave of one's senses (third-person singular simple present takes leave of one's senses, present participle taking leave of one's senses, simple past took leave of one's senses, past participle taken leave of one's senses)

  1. (idiomatic) To go crazy; to stop behaving rationally.
    • Here I am, with my book and my pencil—the latter not pointed so well as I could wish, but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils will keep their points?1868 January 4 – June 6, [William] Wilkie Collins, “Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth. (1848–1849.) […] [Fourth Narrative. Extracted from the Journal of Ezra Jennings.]”, in The Moonstone. A...

Questions about taking leave of one's senses

What is taking leave of one's senses the present participle and gerund of?
Taking leave of one's senses is the present participle and gerund of take leave of one's senses.

Words near taking leave of one's senses in the dictionary

  1. taking its toll
  2. taking kindly
  3. taking L's
  4. taking law into one's own hands
  5. taking leave
  6. taking leave of one's senses
  7. taking liberties
  8. taking lightly
  9. taking long
  10. taking lying down
  11. taking matters into one's own hands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taking leave of one's senses (page history and authors); take leave of one's senses (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “taking leave of one's senses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/taking_leave_of_one%27s_senses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.