Word.ws English Dictionary

picking up one's marbles and going home

picking up one's marbles and going home is the present participle 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 picking up one's marbles and going home

What is picking up one's marbles and going home the present participle of?
Picking up one's marbles and going home is the present participle of pick up one's marbles and go home.

Words near picking up one's marbles and going home in the dictionary

  1. picking the wrong horse
  2. picking through
  3. picking up
  4. picking up on
  5. picking up one's crumbs
  6. picking up one's marbles and going home
  7. picking up steam
  8. picking up stitches
  9. picking up the ball and running with it
  10. picking up the mantle
  11. picking up the pace

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: picking up one's marbles and going 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “picking up one's marbles and going home.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/picking_up_one%27s_marbles_and_going_home. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.