take root

Idioms  

1. 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]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

take root

It was not known how the fire started, but Bambang said the park was extremely dry as El Nino conditions take root in Indonesia.

From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026

It took just that seed for its sister sport netball to take root - initially also going by the name of basketball.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

It would take years, economists and business leaders say, to reorient global patterns of trade that took decades to take root.

From MarketWatch ● Feb. 19, 2026

Support from the U.S. government and multilateral financial institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank helped the industry take root.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2025

As a teenager reading African parasitology books in the medical library, I was boggled by the array of creatures equipped to take root upon a human body.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

Related Words

• burgeon
• germinate
• grow