take its toll

English

Alternative forms

• take a toll, take their toll, take a heavy toll

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

take its toll (third-person singular simple present takes its toll, present participle taking its toll, simple past took its toll, past participle taken its toll)

1. (idiomatic, often followed by on) To affect something, especially negatively; to damage or degrade; to cause harm or destruction.

   Time had taken its toll on the old bridge, and it was no longer sound.

   Heavy smoking and drinking will take its toll on a person's health.

   • 2015, Charles Sydney Goldman, The Empire and the century, Introduction:

     The Thirty Years' War in Germany took its toll of bloodshed without bequeathing as a recompense any real political or moral blessing.

   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     A lot of attention has rightly been paid to the toll that fulfilling our orders takes upon workers in warehouses or drivers in delivery vans.

   • 2018 July 7, Phil McNulty, “Sweden 0-2 England”, in BBC Sport‎^[2]:

     England not only reached the World Cup semi-finals for the first time since Italia 90, they did the job under the pressure of the occasion and the requirement to back up the victory over Colombia on penalties in the last 16 - with all of the mental toll that will have taken.

Synonyms

• do a number on

Translations

to affect negatively

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 负面地影响 (fùmiàn de yǐngxǐang)

• Czech: přijít draze
• Finnish: vaatia veronsa, ottaa veronsa, jättää jälkensä
• French: faire des ravages
• German: seine Opfer fordern, seinen Tribut fordern
• Italian: pesare (it)
• Japanese: 損失をもたらす (sonshitsu wo motarasu)
• Portuguese: trazer consequências, fazer um estrago
• Romanian: a-şi cere obolul, a-şi lua birul, a-şi spune cuvântul, a face ravagii, a reduce numărul, a reduce puterea
• Spanish: cobrarse el peaje, pasar factura (es)
• Swedish: ta ut sin rätt (sv), sätta sina spår

References

• “take * toll”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.