Word.ws English Dictionary

took lightly

took lightly is the simple past of take lightly.

Meaning of take lightly

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To treat casually, without seriousness or worry.
    • Following England's opening-day win over Wales in Cardiff, Martin Johnson's men headed into the Twickenham contest full of confidence but with a warning from their manager not to take the Italians lightly.2011 February 12, Mark Orlovac, “England 59-13 Italy”, in BBC
    Synonyms:
    make light of
    Antonyms:
    take seriously

Questions about took lightly

What is took lightly the simple past of?
Took lightly is the simple past of take lightly.

Words near took lightly in the dictionary

  1. took L's
  2. took law into one's own hands
  3. took leave
  4. took leave of one's senses
  5. took liberties
  6. took lightly
  7. took long
  8. took lying down
  9. took matters into one's own hands
  10. took no for an answer
  11. took no notice of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took lightly (page history and authors); take lightly (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 lightly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/took_lightly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.