taking

Pluraltakings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of take.

   He is taking medication for his blood pressure.

   Taking responsibility for the mistake earned her respect.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it makes the progressive ("is taking"). On its own it is a gerund that works as a noun but still governs an object, as in "taking the least notice of them." That direct object is the test that separates it from the noun of the act, which needs "of" ("the taking of the stockade").

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act by which something is obtained or seized.

   The peaceful taking of the city surprised everyone.

   Ownership passed at the moment of taking.

   Similarcapture, seizure

   Note

   As a noun of action, it usually comes in the frame "the taking of": Conrad's Lord Jim has "the taking of the stockade," a capture made by force. It can also be counted and made plural. Ian Ayres's Optional Law (2010) writes of "takings and retakings," where each round is a separate act of taking.

3. 3
   nounCommonwealthIrelandUKcountable or uncountableplural

   The cash or money received by a shop or other business.

   After the sale, the day's takings exceeded all expectations.

   The manager banked the week's takings every Friday.

   Similarincome, receipts

   Oppositeoutgoings, expenses

   Note

   A word of the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth, and almost always plural: the day's takings, the week's takings, count the takings. Receipts and income are near synonyms, but takings is the shopkeeper's word for cash that comes in over the counter. Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) shows a greengrocer "adding up the day's takings with her hands in red mittens."

4. 4
   adjective

   Attractive and alluring, pleasing in a way that draws people in.

   His taking manner soon won over the skeptical board.

   There was something taking about her easy laugh.

   Similarcharming, engaging, winning, appealing, attractive

   Oppositeunappealing

   Note

   Built from take + -ing, this adjective names what takes hold of the eye or the fancy. It compares like any gradable adjective: Thomas Fuller's The Church-history of Britain (1655) calls Satan's temptations "most taking." It sits before a noun, as in Hardy's "a taking place," or after a verb, as when Dibdin calls a speech "very taking." In the obsolete "contagious" sense, what takes hold is a disease.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The act of seizing someone else's property, often by force or under legal authority.

   The court ruled that the taking of his land required fair payment.

   Residents protested the sudden taking of their property.

   Similarseizure, confiscation, expropriation

6. 6
   noununcountable

   An agitated, anxious state of mind that makes someone behave excitedly or erratically, used in the phrase in a taking.

   He worked himself into a terrible taking waiting for the news.

   The whole household was in a taking when the storm hit.

   Similarstate, flap, tizzy, panic

   Note

   An idiom that has outlasted its noun: almost no one is in a "taking" except in the phrase "in a taking." It runs from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) to Agatha Christie, who still writes "quite in a taking" in 1934. It takes intensifiers ("such a taking"), and Hardy's "one o' your takings" in Far from the Madding Crowd turns it into a recurring fit of temper.

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