take oververb

• 1

  To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.

  • Pilton Yard, the Lynton & Barnstaple headquarters, has been taken over by a fur trading firm, and would-be trespassers to the old engine-shed are turned back by the pungent odour of heaps of carcases.
  • In Rio de Janeiro, thousands protested in a gritty area far from the city’s upscale seaside districts. In other cities, demonstrators blocked roads, barged into City Council meetings or interrupted sessions of local lawmakers, clapping loudly and sometimes taking over the microphone.
• 2

  To adopt a further responsibility or duty.

  • He will take over the job permanently when the accountant retires.
• 3

  To relieve someone temporarily.

  • My husband is taking over the accounts department during the holiday period, while the chief accountant is away.
  • If you will take over driving, I'd like to get some sleep.
• 4

  To buy out the ownership of a business.

  • Acme Motors is to take Jetcar Industries over this week, if all goes as planned.
  • Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.
• 5

  To appropriate something without permission.

• 6

  To annex a territory by conquest or invasion; to conquer.

  • Ancient Rome took over lands throughout the known world.
  • Founded about 1000 bc by Aeolian Greeks, the city [Assos] was successively ruled by Lydians, Persians, Pergamenes, Romans, and Byzantines, until Sultan Orhan Gazi (1288–1360) took it over for the Ottomans in 1330.
• 7

  To become more successful than (someone or something else).

  • Buzz Lightyear has taken over Woody as the most popular children's toy.
  • Tiger Woods has taken over as the top golfer.
• 8

  Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see take, over.

  • He took the car over to the garage.