Word.ws English Dictionary

pick up one's marbles and go home

pick up one's marbles and go home verb: to abruptly leave or abandon a situation or activity in which one is dissatisfied with the way it is progressing.

Verb

pick up one's marbles and go home (third-person singular simple present picks up one's marbles and goes home, present participle picking up one's marbles and going home, simple past picked up one's marbles and went home, past participle picked up one's marbles and gone home)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To abruptly leave or abandon a situation or activity in which one is dissatisfied with the way it is progressing.

Forms of pick up one's marbles and go home

third-person singular presentpicks up one's marbles and goes home
present participlepicking up one's marbles and going home
pastpicked up one's marbles and went home
past participlepicked up one's marbles and gone home

Questions about pick up one's marbles and go home

What does pick up one's marbles and go home mean?
Pick up one's marbles and go home means to abruptly leave or abandon a situation or activity in which one is dissatisfied with the way it is progressing.
What part of speech is pick up one's marbles and go home?
Pick up one's marbles and go home is a verb.
What is the past tense of pick up one's marbles and go home?
The past tense of pick up one's marbles and go home is picked up one's marbles and went home.

Words near pick up one's marbles and go home in the dictionary

  1. pick up
  2. pick up line
  3. pick up lines
  4. pick up on
  5. pick up one's crumbs
  6. pick up one's marbles and go home
  7. pick up speed
  8. pick up steam
  9. pick up stitches
  10. pick up stompies
  11. pick up the ball and run with it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pick up one's marbles and go home (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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