took a leaf out of someone's book
took a leaf out of someone's book is the simple past of take a leaf out of someone's book.
Meaning of take a leaf out of someone's book
Verb
take a leaf out of someone's book (third-person singular simple present takes a leaf out of someone's book, present participle taking a leaf out of someone's book, simple past took a leaf out of someone's book, past participle taken a leaf out of someone's book)
- To adopt an idea or practice of another person.
- Let every youth take a leaf out of my book and make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out of his pocket, and like me he is sure to be a gainer in the end.1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter XVI, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan...
- Synonyms:
- borrow a leaf out of someone's book, borrow a page from someone's book, rip a page out of someone's book, rip a page out of someone's playbook, take a page from someone's book, take a page out of someone's book, take a page out of someone's playbook
Questions about took a leaf out of someone's book
- What is took a leaf out of someone's book the simple past of?
- Took a leaf out of someone's book is the simple past of take a leaf out of someone's book.
Words near took a leaf out of someone's book in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: took a leaf out of someone's book (page history and authors); take a leaf out of someone's book (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: “took a leaf out of someone's book.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/took_a_leaf_out_of_someone%27s_book. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.