Word.ws English Dictionary

get out of Dodge

get out of Dodge verb: to leave, especially to leave a difficult or dangerous environment with all possible haste.

Verb

get out of Dodge (third-person singular simple present gets out of Dodge, present participle getting out of Dodge, simple past got out of Dodge, past participle gotten out of Dodge)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To leave, especially to leave a difficult or dangerous environment with all possible haste.
    • The pulp mills, he predicts, "are going to just high-grade all the best trees and get the hell out of Dodge."1988 November 3, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks, and Forests of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, 5, 1987...
    • When Jasper surfaced, Skiles thought to himself, Woody will come through. He'll find the way. He always gets us out of predicaments like this. Now that he's back it's just a matter or gearing up, getting in the water and getting the hell out of Dodge.1999, Robert Forrest Burgess, The Cave Divers, →ISBN, page 298

Forms of get out of Dodge

third-person singular presentgets out of Dodge
present participlegetting out of Dodge
pastgot out of Dodge
past participlegotten out of Dodge

Origin of get out of Dodge

An allusion to Dodge City, Kansas, a busy cattle town in the late 19th century notorious for gunfighters, gambling, brothels and saloons. Possibly inspired by the radio and television series Gunsmoke (1952–1975).

Questions about get out of Dodge

What does get out of Dodge mean?
Get out of Dodge means to leave, especially to leave a difficult or dangerous environment with all possible haste.
What part of speech is get out of Dodge?
Get out of Dodge is a verb.
What is the past tense of get out of Dodge?
The past tense of get out of Dodge is got out of Dodge.

Words near get out of Dodge in the dictionary

  1. get open
  2. get out
  3. get out from under
  4. get out of
  5. get out of bed on the wrong side
  6. get out of Dodge
  7. get out of here
  8. get out of it
  9. get out of jail free card
  10. get out of jail free cards
  11. get out of my face

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get out of Dodge (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-get out of Dodge.ogg, en-us-get out of Dodge.ogg.

Cite this entry: “get out of Dodge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_out_of_dodge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.