Word.ws English Dictionary

taken no prisoners

taken no prisoners is the past participle of take no prisoners.

Meaning of take no prisoners

Verb

take no prisoners (third-person singular simple present takes no prisoners, present participle taking no prisoners, simple past took no prisoners, past participle taken no prisoners)

  1. (idiomatic) To be uncompromising.
    • It’s a rare thing to see a movie about science that takes no prisoners intellectually.2015 January 21, “Ex Machina: Quest to create an AI takes no prisoners”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), New Scientist
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see take, prisoner.

Questions about taken no prisoners

What is taken no prisoners the past participle of?
Taken no prisoners is the past participle of take no prisoners.

Words near taken no prisoners in the dictionary

  1. taken long
  2. taken lying down
  3. taken matters into one's own hands
  4. taken no for an answer
  5. taken no notice of
  6. taken no prisoners
  7. taken note
  8. taken notes
  9. taken notice
  10. taken oath
  11. taken occasion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taken no prisoners (page history and authors); take no prisoners (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: “taken no prisoners.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/taken_no_prisoners. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.