Word.ws English Dictionary

take to the cleaners

take to the cleaners verb: to take a significant quantity of a person's money or valuables, through overcharging, litigation, unfavorable investing, gambling, fraud, etc.

Verb

take to the cleaners (third-person singular simple present takes to the cleaners, present participle taking to the cleaners, simple past took to the cleaners, past participle taken to the cleaners)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To take a significant quantity of a person's money or valuables, through overcharging, litigation, unfavorable investing, gambling, fraud, etc.
    • “That’s not the idea. These people you want taken to the cleaners were friends of yours yesterday. Maybe they will be friends again next week. I don’t care about that. But I’m not playing politics for you.[…]1929, Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
    • Dizzy refused to pose with a blonde chorine clad only in step-ins. "No sir," exploded Dizzy. ". . . [M]y wife would take me to the cleaners if she saw a picture like that."1934 October 25, “Dizzy and Daffy Begin Careers in Vaudeville”, in The Washington Reporter, retrieved 05 Aug 2013, page 12
  2. (idiomatic, slang) To thrash someone.
    • One more time, mate, I'll take you to the fuckin' cleaners!1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian, spoken by Mr. Big Nose (Michael Palin)

Forms of take to the cleaners

third-person singular presenttakes to the cleaners
present participletaking to the cleaners
pasttook to the cleaners
past participletaken to the cleaners
alternative formtake to the cleaner's

Origin of take to the cleaners

A humorous alteration of the older expression to clean (someone) out.

Questions about take to the cleaners

What does take to the cleaners mean?
Take to the cleaners means to take a significant quantity of a person's money or valuables, through overcharging, litigation, unfavorable investing, gambling, fraud, etc.
What part of speech is take to the cleaners?
Take to the cleaners is a verb.
What is the past tense of take to the cleaners?
The past tense of take to the cleaners is took to the cleaners.

Words near take to the cleaners in the dictionary

  1. take to pound town
  2. take to task
  3. take to the bank
  4. take to the bricks
  5. take to the cleaner's
  6. take to the cleaners
  7. take to the field
  8. take to the grave
  9. take to the heather
  10. take to the hills
  11. take to the next level

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take to the cleaners (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-take to the cleaners.ogg.

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