Definitions
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, literal sense to cause something one is holding to drop, often forcefully.
- v. slang, idiomatic, transitive to produce or perform (something) admirably or forcefully.
- v. slang, idiomatic, intransitive to fight, incite to fight, or approach with the intent to fight; to make a stand.
- v. slang, idiomatic, intransitive (by extension) to accomplish or produce something in a grand, respectable, or successful manner; to "represent".
- v. slang, idiomatic, intransitive to make an individual contribution to a group effort (eg. money pool, collaborative record album)
- v. slang, idiomatic, intransitive to drink a large amount of beer quickly.
Etymologies
- US, popularized 1990s in street culture, from idiom throw down the gauntlet ("to issue a challenge"), used in sense “to fight, to incite a fight, to make a stand”. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Wilting of the Crimean War in after days, Louis Kossuth observed that never did a statesman throw down a more hazardous and daring stake than Cavour when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had found out that it must be done without any conditions or guarantees.”
“I have seen Poseidon Earth-Shaker throw down the Labyrinth, crushing the evil and the good.”
“She was no longer afraid of gang members and street criminals, and would even throw down with an eight-hundred-year-old vampire if need be, but rodents still sort of gave her the willies.”
“They were busily 'unhaling' the rick, that is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of the day.”
“In the fury of the pursuit, the Catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians.”
“A constant steady pressure, will throw down a stone wall in time; but it will take longer, and be more quietly done, than by a series of battering-ram assaults.”
“The people kept on saying that 'by-and-by' they would make an end of their wild ritual, and throw down their enclosures, and at the same time they thronged to talk to him at the Mission station, and built a shed to serve for a school at Auta.”
“The oxen went slowly, and though Fleda managed to have no delay longer than to throw down a trough as the sled came up with each tree which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to make a long day of it.”
“There was a table of pine-wood, sleeked with hand-rubbing; a round stone hearth with a bronze fire-basket, for the cold upland nights; and a carved red bed, whose bearskins we would throw down at evening before the fire.”
“We are tempted to throw down the book and to demand what right John Gordon has to stand beside such men as Patrick Hamilton, and John Knox, and John Wishart, and Archibald Campbell, and Hugh M'Kail, and Richard Cameron, and Alexander Shields?”
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