Meaning
To act with total ruthlessness, aggression or lack of compromise in pursuit of a goal, an argument or a personal style; to make no concessions and spare no feelings. Literally it is a military order to kill enemy soldiers who try to surrender rather than capture them; figuratively it keeps only the relentless force of that order. Collins COBUILD labels the figurative use journalism; it is now at home in business, sports and politics, often admiring rather than critical. The literal order describes what modern law treats as a war crime, so keep the two senses apart. Regional use: American English in origin, now common in British English too.
Origin
Comes from the literal military practice of killing enemy soldiers who try to surrender instead of capturing them, which nineteenth-century war reporting records repeatedly. Merriam-Webster dates the idiomatic phrase to 1915 and the attributive adjective take-no-prisoners to 1968 - both verified on its archived entry - which punctures the popular story that the figurative idiom was born in the 1980s business boom; business and sports usage did surge in that decade, but the metaphor is decades older. Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches says the transfer to other contexts began in the late 1900s, so the two reference works disagree on when the figurative spread took hold, though the military origin itself is not disputed. The noun prisoner is far older: the OED first records it before 1375 in William of Palerne, a borrowing from French.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- not take any prisoners
- take-no-prisoners attitude
Usage Examples
- Her closing argument was a take-no-prisoners performance that left no witness unchallenged.
- The new CEO takes no prisoners; three departments were restructured in his first week.
- Cooking with Carla means a take-no-prisoners menu: no shortcuts, no substitutions, no complaints.