Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A passage for drawing up smoke or air.
  • noun Understanding; comprehension.
  • noun An act of taking in or absorbing, especially into a living organism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To take up; take into the hand.
  • To succor; help.
  • noun A pipe or duct or channel leading gas, water, steam, or other liquid upward from below: used of part of a boiler furnace flue-system, in the gas-producer, blast-furnace, and elsewhere; specifically, a flue leading hot gas from the combustion-chamber or smoke-box to the chimney, in gas-making or in boiler-settings.
  • noun The act of taking up; lifting.
  • noun Perceptive power; apprehension; conception: as, he is quick in the uptake. Scott, Old Mortality, vii. The upcast pipe from the smoke-box of a steam-boiler, leading to the chimney.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To take into the hand; to take up; to help.
  • noun The pipe leading upward from the smoke box of a steam boiler to the chimney, or smokestack; a flue leading upward.
  • noun Scot. Understanding; apprehension.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun understanding, comprehension
  • noun absorption, especially of food or nutrient by an organism
  • noun dated a chimney
  • verb archaic To take up, to lift.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the process of taking food into the body through the mouth (as by eating)
  • noun a process of taking up or using up or consuming

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English uptaken, equivalent to up- +‎ take.

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Examples

  • In blue states, we have out of wedlock abortions instead of out of wedlock births (well, we try to teach birth control but the uptake is never 100%).

    The Volokh Conspiracy » “Do ‘Family Values’ Weaken Families?” 2010

  • And it made little difference that atom-splitting, radar, and television were British discoveries, since like jazz and cinema the main uptake of all the big ideas was on the American side of the Atlantic.

    Downhill All the Way 2006

  • And it made little difference that atom-splitting, radar, and television were British discoveries, since like jazz and cinema the main uptake of all the big ideas was on the American side of the Atlantic.

    Downhill All the Way 2006

  • And it made little difference that atom-splitting, radar, and television were British discoveries, since like jazz and cinema the main uptake of all the big ideas was on the American side of the Atlantic.

    Downhill All the Way 2006

  • He has contributed strongly to the development of selective serotonin uptake blockers, a new generation of antidepressive drugs.

    Physiology or Medicine for 2000 - Press Release 2000

  • These data support the increased long-term uptake of NUEDEXTA, as we continue with our launch efforts and get increased accumulative exposure to doctors.

    unknown title 2011

  • Amazon’s S3 service took this approach and their uptake is too slow, there’s no visible momentum (I know I’ll get lots of links for saying that).

    Scripting News for 6/26/2006 « Scripting News Annex 2006

  • "I don't want to be a scaremonger," Goldacre writes, "but it's relatively easy to spot drops in uptake of vaccines that happen immediately after major scare stories, or, perhaps, a major TV drama.

    Vaccine myths and irresponsibility Ray Girvan 2003

  • "I don't want to be a scaremonger," Goldacre writes, "but it's relatively easy to spot drops in uptake of vaccines that happen immediately after major scare stories, or, perhaps, a major TV drama.

    Archive 2003-12-01 Ray Girvan 2003

  • A common measure of aerobic efficiency is "VO2 max," or optimal oxygen uptake, which is determined using special equipment and a treadmill.

    The Week in Ideas 2010

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