take by surprise
IdiomsExample Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He then prepared for a bold and sudden movement, which should take by surprise one flank of our army.
From Three Years in the Sixth Corps A Concise Narrative of Events in the Army of the Potomac, from 1861 to the Close of the Rebellion, April, 1865 by George T. Stevens
The Buccaneers next landed 100 men, hoping to take by surprise the city of La Serena.
From The Monarchs of the Main, Volume II (of 3) Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers by Walter Thornbury
Finally the rebels retreated, and Michelson discovered that his opponents meant to take by surprise the Fort of Ufa.
From Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The two were superbly mounted, and well calculated, by their style and bearing, to take by surprise the leader of a rabble host marching through a country where all was new to his eyes.
From The Great Mogul by Louis Tracy
I expect to take by surprise a newly-married pair in their honeymoon, and I find a state of things here which I should never have supposed possible.
From Success and How He Won It by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
