throw in the towel
Formsthrows in the towel, throwing in the towel, threw in the towel, thrown in the towel
- 1To give up or admit defeat, abandoning an effort that no longer seems worth continuing.
Like raising a white flag to signal that you have stopped fighting.
When the negotiations stalled for the fifth time, the union finally threw in the towel.
She refused to throw in the towel even after losing most of her funding.
Similarquit, surrender, capitulate, concede, yield
Note
A boxing signal turned everyday idiom: a fighter's support staff threw a towel into the ring to forfeit a match their contestant could not continue. In the idiom, the person quitting throws it themselves, whether that is a struggling restaurant or a rail company. The particle can also follow the object, as in Christian Wolmar's 2024 remark that several companies had "thrown the towel in."
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Origin
The phrase comes from boxing, where a fighter's support staff would traditionally throw a towel into the ring to signal that their contestant could not continue the match and was forfeiting to the opponent.