take for granted

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

1. (transitive, of a thing) To assume something to be true without verification or proof.
   • 1839, Charles Dickens, chapter 17, in Oliver Twist:

     Let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey.

2. (transitive, idiomatic, especially of a person) To give little attention to or to underestimate the value of, to fail to appreciate.
   • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

     These great First Truths, these good and gracious Tidings, these holy and humanizing Spells, in the preconformity to which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so infused, that it were but a tame and inadequate expression to say, we all take them for granted.

   • 1946, "Posthumous Portrait," Time, 25 Nov.,

     He had fiercely championed loveless ladies entering frustrated middle age, the married woman whose husband took her for granted and seldom into his arms.

• See also Thesaurus:suppose