Definition of "take down"

take down

verb
third-person singular simple present takes down, present participle taking down, simple past took down, past participle taken down
1. To remove something from a wall or similar vertical surface to which it is fixed.
2. To remove something from a hanging position.
3. To remove something from a website.
4. To write down as a note, especially to record something spoken.
  Quotations
  But if you ask me to bus my children / I hope the cops take down your name
  1966, Phil Ochs, “Love Me, I'm a Liberal”, in Phils Ochs in Concert
5. To remove a temporary structure such as scaffolding.
6. To lower an item of clothing without removing it.
7. To arrest someone or to place them in detention.
8. To swallow.
  Quotations
  Marcus Seltz, who can take down a bucket of crab legs like a freaking combine.
  2012, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge, page 121
9. To defeat; to destroy or kill (a person).
  Quotations
  It took me eight years to get enough on the asshole to try and take him down.
  2012, Kira Sinclair, Take It Down, page 191
  They'd had occasion to see Peyton Armistead in all his righteous fury and she knew they wouldn't hesitate to take him down if she gave the word.
  2014, Mallery Malone, Take Down
  So Marinus, me and a few other unthanked individuals - Atemporals for the most part, with some mortal collaborators — make it our business to ...take them down.
  2014, David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, page 431
10. (combat sports) To force one’s opponent off their feet in order to transition from striking to grappling in jujitsu, mixed martial arts, etc.
11. (intransitive, colloquial) To collapse or become incapacitated from illness or fatigue.
  Quotations
  " […] I mind the year after we came, my father took down with the ague, and things looked dark enough for a while; but, when old Billy Slater, on the Clear Fork killed a fat cow, he loaded a lot of the choicest on to a horse and brought it to us; […]"
  1880, Albert Adams Graham, History of Richland County, Ohio, page 254
  My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees, / And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
  1948, “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”, Woody Guthrie (lyrics)
12. (transitive) To reduce.

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