Word.ws English Dictionary

threw up the sponge

threw up the sponge is the simple past of throw up the sponge.

Meaning of throw up the sponge

Verb

throw up the sponge (third-person singular simple present throws up the sponge, present participle throwing up the sponge, simple past threw up the sponge, past participle thrown up the sponge)

  1. (archaic, idiomatic, intransitive, slang) To give up a contest; to acknowledge defeat; to throw in the towel.
    • But he was too brave a man to throw up the sponge to fate, and had work to do yet.1870, James Russell Lowell, “Lessing”, in Among My Books, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 330

Questions about threw up the sponge

What is threw up the sponge the simple past of?
Threw up the sponge is the simple past of throw up the sponge.

Words near threw up the sponge in the dictionary

  1. threw together
  2. threw under a bus
  3. threw under the bus
  4. threw up
  5. threw up one's hands
  6. threw up the sponge
  7. threw wobblies
  8. threwest
  9. threwst
  10. threy
  11. thriambi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: threw up the sponge (page history and authors); throw up the sponge (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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