take the bull by the horns

1. 1.

   face a difficulty and grapple with it without avoiding it

   Broaderconfront

Questions about take the bull by the horns

What does take the bull by the horns mean?

take the bull by the horns means "face a difficulty and grapple with it without avoiding it".

Is take the bull by the horns a common word?

take the bull by the horns is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.