take orders

1. 1.

   receive and be expected to follow directions or commands

   “I don't take orders from you!”

   Broaderobey
2. 2.

   be ordained; enter the Christian ministry

   “She took orders last month”

Questions about take orders

What does take orders mean?

take orders means "receive and be expected to follow directions or commands". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is take orders a common word?

take orders is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.