to take fire
15
8.3
- phrasal verb
:
recibir fuego
- Super 64, are you taking fire?
- took heavy fire
- took enemy fire
- took incoming fire
At least when you drive by and start taking fire you have some armor.
- At least when you drive by and start taking fire you have some armor.
- What a year in combat, taking fire, engaging the enemy.
- Like, so I, I mean, we're taking fire and I go hide behind the smallest little berm.
- July in Iraq and I had to run to this gunfight because we were taking fire.
Examples
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We have wounded and we are taking fire.
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Tell them we've taken enemy fire!
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We are taking heavy fire south of the hospital.
-
At this point, they take very heavy fire as they go by this group of men.
Blog text (12) -
I'm taking heavy fire, do you copy?
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We are taking fire.
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We're taking fire!
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They take direct fire from AK-47s from about two feet away.
Blog text (12) -
They're taking fire.
Fiction book (1992) -
As they moved closer to the enemy base, the soldiers began to take fire from hidden snipers.
How Intense
Surface Forms
Morphology
take + fire
The phrase is compositionally built from 'take' (in the sense 'to receive' or 'sustain') + 'fire' (gunfire), so the military sense 'to come under attack/receive gunfire' is partially derivable from the parts. However, it relies on a less frequent sense of 'take' and must be disambiguated from the common meaning 'take fire' = 'catch fire/ignite', so a B1 learner may not reliably infer the intended meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
The verb take fire comes from the idea of take meaning 'get' and fire meaning shooting or bullets. Imagine a vehicle or group that begins to get bullets fired at it, so the phrase means 'to come under attack'.