Toma Meaning

Toma Meaning

People reach this word from a Spanish sentence, a song lyric, a menu or a name, and each has a different answer.

In Spanish, toma is a form of the verb tomar: “take”. It is both the command (“take!”, “here, have this”) and the present tense for he, she or you-formal (“she takes”, “he drinks”). Shouted on its own, ¡toma! is closer to “take that!” or “serves you right”. The same is true in Portuguese.

Outside those two languages the word is unrelated: an Italian cheese, the Romanian form of the name Thomas, and in Tagalog a drinking session.

Toma in Spanish: the verb

Tomar covers much more ground than English “take”. The Real Academia Española’s dictionary lists 39 senses, from “to take hold of something with the hand” to taking a bus and taking something seriously.

Toma is two forms of it, spelled the same:

• The command, for tú: toma el vaso, “take the glass”; toma, es para ti, “here, it’s for you”.
• The present tense, for él, ella and usted: ella toma el autobús, “she takes the bus”.

The sentence around the word tells you which one you are reading.

The drinking sense

One of the dictionary’s senses of tomar is simply “to eat or drink”: tomar un desayuno, to have breakfast. The dictionary also marks a sense used in the Americas and Equatorial Guinea: to drink alcohol. So ¿qué tomas? is “what are you having?”, and in those places tomar on its own can mean drinking.

As a shout: “¡Toma!”

On its own, ¡toma! is an interjection, and the dictionary gives it two colloquial uses:

• pointing at something as a punishment, a comeuppance or a disillusion. Its example: ¿No te dije que corrías peligro? Pues ¡toma!, “Didn’t I tell you that you were in danger? Well, take that!”
• signalling that something is no news or of little importance, closer to “so what?”.

A related expression, tómate esa, is said when someone takes a blow, to show they deserved it.

Figurative uses

• Tomar una decisión — to make a decision. The dictionary notes that tomar with some nouns means the same as the verb they come from.
• Tomar en serio — to take seriously.
• Tomar el pelo — literally “to take the hair”: to tease someone with fake praise, promises or flattery.

Toma as a noun

As a noun, la toma is a taking. The dictionary’s senses include:

• A conquest or occupation by force of a town or stronghold, as in la toma de la Bastilla, the storming of the Bastille.
• A portion taken at one time, and each dose of a medicine taken by mouth.
• The point where a flow of fluid or electricity is drawn off. In the Americas a power socket is a tomacorriente.
• The act of photographing or filming, as in a film take.

Toma the song: Pitbull featuring Lil Jon, and the phonk tracks

Several songs share the title. The best-documented is “Toma” by Pitbull featuring Lil Jon. It is on Pitbull’s 2004 album M.I.A.M.I., released by TVT Records, and it charted on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs, reaching No. 21 in March 2005.

Pitbull’s “Toma” is not an Enrique Iglesias song. Pitbull and Iglesias have recorded together, and Billboard lists “Messin’ Around” (2016) as Pitbull featuring Enrique Iglesias, but “Toma” is credited to Pitbull and Lil Jon.

More recent tracks use the title too, including phonk tracks: “Toma Phonk” by Mia Hill (2023) and “Toma Toma (Brazilian Phonk)” by SXBER (2024) are two. Whatever the track, a shouted “toma!” in a Spanish or Portuguese lyric carries the meanings above: the command “take it!”, or “take that!”.

Toma as a name

Toma is a form of Thomas. The name goes back to an Aramaic word for “twin”, and the Gospel of John calls the apostle “Thomas, which is called Didymus”, the Greek for twin. In the Romanian Bible the same verse reads Toma, zis Geamăn: “Toma, called the Twin”.

As a surname

The Dictionary of American Family Names gives several separate origins for the surname Toma, almost all of them forms of Thomas: Romanian and Croatian from the personal name Toma; Italian, French, Polish, Slovak and Hungarian from pet forms of Thomas; Albanian from Tomë; Assyrian/Chaldean from the Syriac Tōmā; and Arabic, from a variant of Tuma, “Thomas”. It also lists an unrelated Japanese surname, Tōma.

None of the origins it gives is the Spanish verb tomar.

Toma in other languages

• Portuguese — the same as Spanish. Toma is the command form and the he/she form of tomar, which covers taking, eating and drinking. The Priberam dictionary also lists toma! as an informal interjection showing satisfaction at someone’s defeat or setback, with the example toma, foi bem feito o que lhe aconteceu: “take that, what happened to him served him right”.
• Italian — not a verb. The Treccani dictionary lists toma as a cheese typical of Piedmont and the Aosta Valley, made from cow’s, sheep’s or mixed milk, and as a word found only in the old saying promettere Roma e toma, “to promise great things”, and a few like it. One variety, Toma Piemontese, is a protected designation of origin, and its rules require cow’s milk.
• Romanian — Toma is the name Thomas, as above.
• Tagalog — toma is a drinking session, and a tomador is a drinker of alcohol, or a heavy drinker.

How to tell which toma you have

Ask where you found it:

1. In a Spanish or Portuguese sentence, check what comes after it. A thing to take (toma el vaso) means the command; a person before it (ella toma) means the present tense; a drink after it means drinking.
2. Alone, with exclamation marks, it is the interjection: “take that!” or “serves you right”.
3. After la or una, it is the noun: a capture, a dose, an outlet or a take.
4. On a cheese board or an Italian menu, it is the cheese.
5. As someone’s name, it is Thomas.
6. In a song title, check the artist: the 2004 Pitbull track with Lil Jon is one of several called “Toma”.

Sources

• Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española: tomar (senses, the interjection ¡toma!, tómate esa, conjugation), toma (the noun), pelo (tomar el pelo), tomacorriente.
• Priberam, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa: toma, tomar, conjugation of tomar.
• Treccani, Vocabolario: toma (1) and toma (2).
• Disciplinare di produzione della denominazione di origine protetta “Toma Piemontese”, Gazzetta Ufficiale, 5 March 2015.
• Billboard, Pitbull chart history, Hot Rap Songs.
• Apple Music, M.I.A.M.I. by Pitbull and “Toma Toma (Brazilian Phonk)” by SXBER; Spotify, “Toma Phonk” by Mia Hill.
• Strong’s Concordance, G2381, Thomas; John 11:16 in the Cornilescu Romanian Bible.
• Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition (2022), via Ancestry: Toma surname meaning.
• Tagalog.com dictionary: toma and tomador.

Checked September 2026.