take water

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

1. (now rare, historical) To travel in a vessel on a body of water; to embark on a ship. [from 15th c.]
   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 88, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume III, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     I concealed my amour, as well as the effects of it, from his knowledge, and frequently took water from the Bridge, that my motions might not be discovered.

2. As a person or animal, to go into a body of water and start swimming. [from 15th c.]
3. Of a vessel, to admit water through a leak or port or similar; to take in water. [from 16th c.]
   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:

     It had taken Water, and the Powder was cak'd as hard as a Stone.

4. (US, colloquial) To run away; to back down. [from 19th c.]
5. (rail transport, of steam locomotives) To top up the water tanks.
   • 1950 January, Arthur F. Beckenham, “With British Railways to the Far North”, in Railway Magazine, page 6:

     The engines took water at Dingwall, the junction for the cross-country line to Kyle of Lochalsh, and again at Tain, 44 miles from Inverness.

   • 1956 December, Michael Robbins, “End of the Border Counties Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 808:

     As the engine took water, there was time to think of the curious turn of events that brought the North British (in the thin disguise of "Border Counties Railway") over the border, down the North Tyne to Hexham, and eastward from Reedsmouth by the Wansbeck Valley line to Morpeth (and Rothbury), though some of the emptiest parts of one of the emptiest counties of England.