take one's ball and go home
Meaning: To quit in a sulk and spoil the activity for everyone else.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “When the vote went against him, he took his ball and went home and resigned from the committee.”
Category: Daily Life
Origin: From children's games, where whoever owns the only ball can end the game by leaving with it. American English from the 20th century.
Equivalents in other languages
- Spanish: romper la baraja — literally: to break the deck of cards
More idioms — Daily Life
- give and take — Mutual compromise, where each side concedes something.
- on the sly — Secretly, so as not to be seen.
- bail someone out — To rescue someone from trouble, especially by paying.
- a double-edged sword — Something with both good and bad consequences.
- blow the lid off — To expose a scandal or secret.
- be ahead of the game — To be in a better position than one's rivals.
More English idioms
- a spare tire — A roll of fat around the waist.
- count one's chickens before they hatch — To rely on something good before it has actually happened.
- small potatoes — Something unimportant or trivial.
- a dog's breakfast — A complete mess.
- not a peep — Not a sound, or not a word from someone.
- get out of hand — To become impossible to control.
From our tongue twisters
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. — A relentless 'p' plosive drill; a peck is an old dry measure of about nine litres.
- Unique New York. — Three words that jam the 'y/n/k' sequence together — repeat it and it collapses into 'you…
- Pad kid poured curd pulled cod. — Alternating repetition — the consonants swap at the start of every other word, which is w…