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Glite Dictionary
to take nerve

to take nerve

1 6.5
Need to be brave to do something
  • idiom
translation icon : tener agallas
  • It takes nerve to speak in front of a large audience.

Examples

  • To confront the bully required a lot of nerve from him.

  • You think that takes nerve?

    Nerve (2016)

  • "The horsemen, who had kept their distance at the start, had seemed to take nerve."

    Fiction book (1990)

  • "It takes nerve, that's what it takes, it takes nerve," he said to the air.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • "It takes nerve, that's what it takes, it takes nerve," he said to the air.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • 'Cause with y'all vicious motherfuckers, it do take nerve.

    Paris Is Burning (1991)

  • It takes nerve to lay traplines on restricted land.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Navigating the Yangtse took nerve and a strong heart, "still does," says Mr. Chee.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Bringing up the topic of mental health in a meeting takes nerve.

Antonyms

to shy away from
41 4.6

Avoid doing something because you feel afraid or unsure

Surface Forms

take nerve infinitive
taking nerve present participle
takes nerve third person singular
took nerve past
taken nerve past participle

Morphology

take + nerve

The meaning 'to require courage' is directly derivable from combining 'take' in the sense 'to require' with 'nerve' meaning 'courage'; a learner who knows these constituent senses can infer the MWE. This is a common, compositional collocation (e.g. 'it takes nerve') and follows a cross-linguistically frequent grammar for expressing requirement, so it should be immediately understandable to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Take nerve gives a clear picture: you must take some nerve from inside you before you do a hard or scary thing. So it means 'to need courage' to do something brave.