Word.ws English Dictionary

picked up one's marbles and went home

picked up one's marbles and went home is the simple past of pick up one's marbles and go home.

Meaning of pick up one's marbles and go home

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.

Questions about picked up one's marbles and went home

What is picked up one's marbles and went home the simple past of?
Picked up one's marbles and went home is the simple past of pick up one's marbles and go home.

Words near picked up one's marbles and went home in the dictionary

  1. picked through
  2. picked up
  3. picked up on
  4. picked up one's crumbs
  5. picked up one's marbles and gone home
  6. picked up one's marbles and went home
  7. picked up steam
  8. picked up stitches
  9. picked up the ball and ran with it
  10. picked up the ball and run with it
  11. picked up the mantle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picked up one's marbles and went home (page history and authors); 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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