Word.ws English Dictionary

lock someone up and throw away the key

lock someone up and throw away the key verb: to lock someone up in prison indefinitely.

Verb

lock someone up and throw away the key (third-person singular simple present locks someone up and throws away the key, present participle locking someone up and throwing away the key, simple past locked someone up and threw away the key, past participle locked someone up and thrown away the key)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To lock someone up in prison indefinitely.

Forms of lock someone up and throw away the key

third-person singular presentlocks someone up and throws away the key
present participlelocking someone up and throwing away the key
pastlocked someone up and threw away the key
past participlelocked someone up and thrown away the key

Questions about lock someone up and throw away the key

What does lock someone up and throw away the key mean?
Lock someone up and throw away the key means to lock someone up in prison indefinitely.
What part of speech is lock someone up and throw away the key?
Lock someone up and throw away the key is a verb.
What is the past tense of lock someone up and throw away the key?
The past tense of lock someone up and throw away the key is locked someone up and threw away the key.

Words near lock someone up and throw away the key in the dictionary

  1. lock picks
  2. lock ring
  3. lock rings
  4. lock screen
  5. lock screens
  6. lock someone up and throw away the key
  7. lock step
  8. lock stitch
  9. lock stitches
  10. lock the stable door after the horse has been stolen
  11. lock the stable door after the horse has bolted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lock someone up and throw away the key (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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