Word.ws English Dictionary

took to the cleaners

took to the cleaners is the simple past of take to the cleaners.

Meaning of take to the cleaners

Verb

take to the cleaners (third-person singular simple present takes to the cleaners, present participle taking to the cleaners, simple past took to the cleaners, past participle taken to the cleaners)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To take a significant quantity of a person's money or valuables, through overcharging, litigation, unfavorable investing, gambling, fraud, etc.
    • “That’s not the idea. These people you want taken to the cleaners were friends of yours yesterday. Maybe they will be friends again next week. I don’t care about that. But I’m not playing politics for you.[…]1929, Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
  2. (idiomatic, slang) To thrash someone.
    • One more time, mate, I'll take you to the fuckin' cleaners!1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian, spoken by Mr. Big Nose (Michael Palin)

Questions about took to the cleaners

What is took to the cleaners the simple past of?
Took to the cleaners is the simple past of take to the cleaners.

Words near took to the cleaners in the dictionary

  1. took to one's heels
  2. took to task
  3. took to the bank
  4. took to the bricks
  5. took to the cleaner's
  6. took to the cleaners
  7. took to the field
  8. took to the grave
  9. took to the heather
  10. took to the hills
  11. took to the road

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took to the cleaners (page history and authors); take to the cleaners (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 to the cleaners.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/took_to_the_cleaners. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.