Take Risks

危険を冒す (kiken wo okasu): brave the danger. 危険 kiken is danger, cited from 737; を marks the object; 冒す okasu is to do a thing knowingly in the face of danger, the verb Japanese also uses of defying weather and profaning the sacred, so the phrase has more edge than take risks: it is what a person does knowing the cost. It is a set expression with its own dictionary entry, and its roots are commercial: an 1884 etiquette manual translated from the American, an 1889 lecture on life insurance, a Waseda lesson glossing the English run a risk. 危険 is neither singular nor plural, so the title's risks has no counterpart to lose.