Word.ws English Dictionary

go to the mattresses

go to the mattresses verb: to go to war; to use ruthless tactics; to act without restraint.

Verb

go to the mattresses (third-person singular simple present goes to the mattresses, present participle going to the mattresses, simple past went to the mattresses, past participle gone to the mattresses)

  1. (idiomatic) To go to war; to use ruthless tactics; to act without restraint.
    • I want Sollozzo. If not, it's all-out war. We'll go to the mattresses.1969, Mario Puzo, The Godfather, Putnam, page 132
    • They will have to go to the mattresses; that is they will have to risk a long ugly strike.1988 December 18, Glen Waggoner, “Sports: Collusion Is Over, but Excess Is Back”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 Sep 2008

go to the mattresses meaning in Bengali

go to the mattresses in Bengali

যুদ্ধে যাওয়া, নির্মম কৌশল ব্যবহার করা, সংযমহীনভাবে কাজ করা

Forms of go to the mattresses

third-person singular presentgoes to the mattresses
present participlegoing to the mattresses
pastwent to the mattresses
past participlegone to the mattresses

Origin of go to the mattresses

From Mario Puzo's gangster novel The Godfather (1969). Those involved in such a conflict might be expected to stay in hideouts where they would sleep on mattresses rather than in beds.

Questions about go to the mattresses

What does go to the mattresses mean?
Go to the mattresses means to go to war; to use ruthless tactics; to act without restraint.
What is go to the mattresses in Bengali?
Go to the mattresses in Bengali is যুদ্ধে যাওয়া, নির্মম কৌশল ব্যবহার করা, সংযমহীনভাবে কাজ করা. See Go to the mattresses meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is go to the mattresses?
Go to the mattresses is a verb.
What is the past tense of go to the mattresses?
The past tense of go to the mattresses is went to the mattresses.

Words near go to the mattresses in the dictionary

  1. go to the ends of the earth
  2. go to the ends of the world
  3. go to the goat's house for wool
  4. go to the mat
  5. go to the mats
  6. go to the mattresses
  7. go to the polls
  8. go to the restroom
  9. go to the scaffold
  10. go to the toilet
  11. go to the trouble

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go to the mattresses (page history and authors); go to the mattresses (Bengali Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-go to the mattresses.ogg.

Cite this entry: “go to the mattresses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_to_the_mattresses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.