take a shine to
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To develop a strong liking or attraction to someone or something
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
phát triển một sự yêu thích mạnh mẽ hoặc thu hút
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to take a shine, as in polish
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
And there will be no danger of fans taking a shine to the ‘ special effects’.
Baloo the bear takes a shine to his mancub friend Mowgli in The Jungle Book.
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 shine to” mean?
To develop a strong liking or attraction to someone or something Literally: to take a shine, as in polish
Is “take a shine to” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.