take the liberty
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To do something without permission
Literally: take the freedom
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ At this present moment they are engaged in a fully comprehensive training course using the systems run by the local college, on which I took the liberty of enrolling them.
Pamela, take heed that you do not suffer the purity of your own mind to make you too rigorous a censurer of other people's actions.
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 the liberty” mean?
To do something without permission Literally: take the freedom
Is “take the liberty” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.