take the fall

Idioms

Incur blame or censure for another's misdeeds, as in She's taken the fall for you in terms of any political damage, or A senior official took the fall for the failed intelligence operation. This expression originated in the 1920s as underworld slang. It began to be extended to less criminal kinds of blame in the second half of the 1900s. Also see take a fall, def. 2.

Example Sentences

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take the fall

Students are the foot soldiers who take the fall when administrators need a show of resolve, but the academic departments train and deploy them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025

And someone close to him will take the fall.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2025

Matthew Mott was dispensable enough to take the fall for the previous failures but Brendon McCullum, given the keys to all England sides to mould as he pleases until 2027, is not.

From BBC ● Feb. 22, 2025

No human needed to, it appears, if a robot could hypothetically take the fall.

From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2023

She’d never meant to get caught in the blast and had believed her father’s aide had set up another student to take the fall.

From "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charbonneau

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

take the fall

Example Sentences

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