Word.ws English Dictionary

thrown in the towel

thrown in the towel is the past participle of throw in the towel.

Meaning of throw in the towel

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To quit; to give up.
    • If their restaurant can't get business even on Mother's Day, it might be time for them to throw in the towel.

Questions about thrown in the towel

What is thrown in the towel the past participle of?
Thrown in the towel is the past participle of throw in the towel.

Words near thrown in the towel in the dictionary

  1. thrown in
  2. thrown in at the deep end
  3. thrown in one's hand
  4. thrown in the cards
  5. thrown in the sponge
  6. thrown in the towel
  7. thrown in with
  8. thrown it back
  9. thrown light on
  10. thrown money around
  11. thrown money away

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thrown in the towel (page history and authors); throw in the towel (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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Cite this entry: “thrown in the towel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thrown_in_the_towel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.