take root
Become established or fixed, as in We're not sure how the movement took root, but it did so very rapidly. This idiom transfers the establishment of a plant, whose roots settle into the earth, to other matters. [Late 1500s]
Words Nearby take root
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
How to use take root in a sentence
Most activists agree that ultimately, the message against FGM has to come from within the community to truly take root.
America’s Underground Female Genital Mutilation Crisis | Nina Strochlic | June 11, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTWhich raises the question: If the idea of the gloriously superfluous disappears from nature, how does it take root in the mind?
It took months, she said, for any semblance of normality to take root.
Two Decades After Genocide, Rwanda’s Women Have Made the Nation Thrive | Nina Strochlic | April 2, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTWhen the Berlin Wall fell, he did not crow but allowed democracy to take root on its own merits in the former Soviet republics.
George H.W. Bush, Our Preppiest Ex-President, Honored at White House | John Avlon | July 16, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTThe introduction of political censorship by the PA cannot be allowed to take root.
It will most flourish where nothing but itself will take root.
They then grow downwards, as though bent (by force), till they touch the earth, where they penetrate and take root like layers.
The evil seed thus sown did not fail to take root and bring forth its fruit, just as the sower intended.
Adrift on the Pacific | Edward S. EllisThere must be an actual economic need before a new movement can be expected to take root and flourish.
Our National Forests | Richard H. Douai BoerkerIt is also remarkable that in this section the Roman Catholic religion does not seem to have been able to take root.
The Modern Ku Klux Klan | Henry Peck Fry
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