take in hand

Idioms and Phrases

Deal with, assume control of, as in He's going to take their debts in hand and see if they need to declare bankruptcy , or Once the new teacher takes them in hand this class will do much better . [c. 1300] Also see in hand , def. 2.

Example Sentences

“The heads of property development firms must personally take in hand the work of dealing with petitions and maintaining stability.”

From New York Times

With the revolution, and the chaos that followed, the formation of a Mexican identity wasn’t just an aesthetic project; artists struggled to take in hand the larger political definition of what it meant to be Mexican and what Mexico would become as a nation.

From Washington Post

The results proved Machiavelli right: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success,” he wrote in “ The Prince,” “than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

From Washington Post

Janna Levin opens her chronicle of the long and twisting journey to the moment of detection, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, with a quote from Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

From Nature

But on the show, in what seemed a betrayal of the darkly comic spirit of the film, violence was something real men knew, or had to learn, how to take in hand.

From Slate

Related Words

• begin
• deal with
• engage in
• try
• undertake
• work on