危険を冒す kiken o okasu Take Risks

危険を冒す is to brave a danger: to go ahead knowing the cost. 冒す is the verb Japanese uses for putting out to sea through wind and waves, so the phrase has more edge than the English take risks. It is a set expression with its own dictionary entry, and a phrase of decision.

危険 is neither singular nor plural, so the title's risks has no counterpart to lose.

The phrase came in with the translators of the early Meiji years: 中村正直 wrote it for braved dangers in his 1870 Japanese of Smiles's Self-Help and for Mill's incur the risk in 1872, and the English-Japanese dictionaries set it beside to run a risk by 1904.

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