Wiktionary
vb. (context idiomatic English) To purposely receive a gunshot that was intended for another.
Usage examples of "take a bullet".
Rather take a bullet in the head and try and take a stickie with me on the last train west.
No book person is going to take a bullet, if you try and shoot one, chances are they'll jump.
But first we've got to get you away from here, back to San Francisco with us, before you take a bullet in your brain.
I'd rather take a bullet in the medulla than spend forty years in stir trying to keep my virginity.
She could turn and run from the stageand take a bullet in the back.
She could leap from the stage and try to land on top of Meland take a bullet in mid-air.
The surgeon could take a leg off in ninety seconds, he could probe for a bullet and pluck it from next to a thighbone in sixty, he could set broken limbs, he could even take a bullet from a man's chest if it had not pierced a lung, but no one on earth, not even Napoleon's famous Surgeon-General Larrey, could take out a bullet that had lodged in the lower right abdomen.