take root

Idioms and Phrases

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]

Example Sentences

Most activists agree that ultimately, the message against FGM has to come from within the community to truly take root.

From The Daily Beast

Which raises the question: If the idea of the gloriously superfluous disappears from nature, how does it take root in the mind?

From The Daily Beast

It took months, she said, for any semblance of normality to take root.

From The Daily Beast

When the Berlin Wall fell, he did not crow but allowed democracy to take root on its own merits in the former Soviet republics.

From The Daily Beast

The introduction of political censorship by the PA cannot be allowed to take root.

From The Daily Beast

It will most flourish where nothing but itself will take root.

From Project Gutenberg

They then grow downwards, as though bent (by force), till they touch the earth, where they penetrate and take root like layers.

From Project Gutenberg

The evil seed thus sown did not fail to take root and bring forth its fruit, just as the sower intended.

From Project Gutenberg

There must be an actual economic need before a new movement can be expected to take root and flourish.

From Project Gutenberg

It is also remarkable that in this section the Roman Catholic religion does not seem to have been able to take root.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• burgeon
• germinate
• grow