take a powder
Verb
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Verb
- (idiomatic, US, colloquial) To leave without saying goodbye; leave quietly, run away; scram; depart without taking leave or notifying anyone, often with a connotation of avoiding something unpleasant or shirking responsibility.
- Synonyms: take a walkout powder
- 1933, Raymond Chandler, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, Collected Stories, Everyman's Library (2002), p. 20:
- 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."
- 1946, Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, Payback Press 1999, p. 66:
- First Mrs Hitchcock packed up and took a powder, and there was hell to pay.
- 2004, Robert Hough, Hogie Wyckoff, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, p. 418:
- Go on, now. Scram. Take a powder. And don't come back till people on the street start wishing you a good afternoon.
- French: prendre la poudre d'escampette
- German: sich aus dem Staub machen
- Russian: скры́ться
- Spanish: dar la espantada (colloquial)
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003