Word.ws English Dictionary

took a powder

took a powder is the simple past of take a powder.

Meaning of take a powder

Verb

take a powder (third-person singular simple present takes a powder, present participle taking a powder, simple past took a powder, past participle taken a powder)

  1. (US, colloquial, idiomatic) To leave without saying goodbye; to leave quietly, to run away; to scram; to depart without taking leave or notifying anyone, often with the implication of avoiding something unpleasant or shirking responsibility.
    • Macdonald spoke slowly, bitterly. "The kidnapping is one too many for me, Costello. I don't want any part of it. I'm takin' a powder from this toy mob. I took a chance that bright boy might side me."1933, Raymond Chandler, “Blackmailers Don't Shoot”, in Collected Stories, Everyman's Library, published 2002, page 20

Questions about took a powder

What is took a powder the simple past of?
Took a powder is the simple past of take a powder.

Words near took a powder in the dictionary

  1. took a pew
  2. took a picture
  3. took a pill
  4. took a piss
  5. took a pitch
  6. took a powder
  7. took a pull
  8. took a rain check
  9. took a raincheck
  10. took a reef in
  11. took a ride to Tyburn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took a powder (page history and authors); take a powder (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: “took a powder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/took_a_powder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.