Word.ws English Dictionary

took no prisoners

took no prisoners is the simple past 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 took no prisoners

What is took no prisoners the simple past of?
Took no prisoners is the simple past of take no prisoners.

Words near took no prisoners in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took 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.

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