take stock
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Assess a situation to understand its current state
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
đánh giá tình hình để hiểu trạng thái hiện tại
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: count or evaluate inventory
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Deutsche ~ Telekom ~ AG takes stock of the ISDN promotional campaign 1.1~million new basic accesses since April 1995 - 600,000 customers receive credit - Number of basic channels approaching the 6~million mark
He turned and seemed to take stock of her, the unwittingly defensive stance of her slim figure, and she found the experience highly disconcerting.
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 stock” mean?
Assess a situation to understand its current state Literally: count or evaluate inventory
Is “take stock” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.