take a bow

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

Receive credit or applause for something

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

nhận được tín nhiệm hoặc vỗ tay cho điều gì đó

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: make a bowing gesture
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The young composer called out of his electronic cocoon after a performance and taking his bows with the other musicians, a rare grin on his sweating face.
News Round - Up: More PEPs take a bow

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “take a bow” mean?

Receive credit or applause for something Literally: make a bowing gesture

Is “take a bow” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.