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Reader question: Please explain “take a bow” in this sentence: “I wish Taylor was sitting right there so he could take a bow for all the work he did on this.” My comments: People bow – leaning forward or inclining their head – to other people to show respect or acknowledgement. Here, the speaker wants Taylor to bow to the people present in acknowledgement. If Taylor were here, of course. If he were here, the speaker wants to commend him in person for all the good work he’d done on the current project so that he could take a bow, as an actor does after a good performance on stage. The actor takes a bow in acknowledgement of the fact all the audience are applauding him, and in gratitude. In our example, the speaker wishes Taylor were here to do the same thing. This means, of course, that the speaker thinks highly of Taylor’s work. In short, praising someone by saying they should take a bow is just another way of saying they’ve done a good job and are duly recognized. In other words: “Taylor, well done!” Alright, here are media examples of situations where people should, can or may take a bow for doing a good job: 1. The first tires Pirelli tested preseason were so durable they could have lasted for three races; “we were too conservative by far,” Hembery added. The teams and F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone wanted tires that would require about 2 or 3 pit stops per race. That required tire compounds that would wear neither too quickly nor too slowly, and “it took us a lot of time to understand how to do that,” he said. “It would have been far easier from our point of view to have made something that just lasted the weekend,” for the whole Grand Prix, he said. | 
