throw up one's hands
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]throw up one's hands (third-person singular simple present throws up one's hands, present participle throwing up one's hands, simple past threw up one's hands, past participle thrown up one's hands)
- (intransitive) To raise both hands in the air in an exasperated manner.
- (intransitive, idiomatic) To cease an attempt because it is perceived as doomed.
- 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:
- I see it warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead—I'd got to throw up my hands.
- 2001, James Patterson, Cradle and All, Warner Books, →ISBN, page 58:
- I wanted to throw up my hands and say, "Thanks. See ya." But I couldn't walk away.
- 2007 August 22, Oliver Rist, “Does Vista suck?”, in InfoWorld:
- So to us, the question isn't just "Does Vista suck?" but "Does Vista suck enough that businesses of any size should simply throw up their hands and migrate over to something else?"
Synonyms
[edit]- (to cease an attempt): give up, throw in the towel
Translations
[edit]raise both hands in the air
(idiomatic) to quit; to give up — see throw in the towel