take one's medicine

present singular third person takes one's medicine · participle present taking one's medicine · past took one's medicine · participle past taken one's medicine

1. idiomaticinformalTo endure an unpleasant obligation, especially a punishment.

   I s'pose I'll have to go back and take my medicine. Now that I've got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it.

   2015, L. M. Montgomery, Rainbow Valley, page 50

   3 more examples

   Your resistance to our class won't do you any good . If you'll come out and take your medicine like men, all right; but if you resist it will go that much harder with you.

   1910, Arthur M. Winfield, The Rover Boys at College

   if the police pick up "a real fine boy" —which most of them are — who has been fooling around, the boy's father can add a building block to Junior's personality by saying, "My boy, you know better. Now take your medicine like a man and we'll just call it one of life's lessons.”

   1962, W. Cleon Skousen, So You Want to Raise a Boy?, page 203

   Today he felt obliged to take his medicine, to acknowledge the apex of his life had been reached and he was plunging in a billycart down the other side.

   2015, Dave Warner, Before It Breaks, page 128

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see take, medicine.