To accept circumstances as they are; to deal calmly with a setback, sudden popularity, or any other occurrence. This expression calls up the image of a horse clearing a hurdle without checking its gallop. It began to be used figuratively about 1900, as by Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth, 1905): “I’d want something that would look more easy and natural, more as if I took it in my stride.” A similar locution is take it as it comes—that is, accept whatever happens.W. S. Gilbert used it as an admirable philosophy in The Gondoliers (1889, “Life’s Tangled Skein,” Act I): “Life’s a pleasant institution, /Let us take it as it comes!”