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View synonyms for take the rap

take the rap

  1. To be punished or blamed, especially when innocent: “The crime boss arranged it so that his underling took the rap for the insurance scam.”


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Idioms and Phrases

Be punished or blamed for something, as in I don't want to take the rap for Mary, who forgot to mail the check in time , or Steve is such a nice guy that he's always taking the rap for his colleagues . This slangy idiom originally used rap in the sense of “a criminal charge,” a usage still current. By the mid-1900s it was also used more broadly.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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