Word.ws English Dictionary

throwing up the sponge

throwing up the sponge is the present participle and gerund 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 throwing up the sponge

What is throwing up the sponge the present participle and gerund of?
Throwing up the sponge is the present participle and gerund of throw up the sponge.

Words near throwing up the sponge in the dictionary

  1. throwing together
  2. throwing under a bus
  3. throwing under the bus
  4. throwing up
  5. throwing up one's hands
  6. throwing up the sponge
  7. throwing wheel
  8. throwing wheels
  9. throwing wobblies
  10. throwing-ax
  11. throwing-axe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throwing 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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