English · Idiom Candidate

take the plunge

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To decide to do something difficult or risky after thinking about it for a long time

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Quyết định làm điều gì đó khó hoặc rủi ro sau khi nghĩ về nó trong một thời gian dài

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to jump into water

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

A wealth of inviting attractions await all visitors who take the plunge …

Her conversion helped to make the BDDA at long last take the plunge and appoint its first paid staff.

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 plunge” mean?

To decide to do something difficult or risky after thinking about it for a long time Literally: to jump into water

Is “take the plunge” formal or informal?

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