Reader question:
In this passage from a story about Microsoft deciding not to buy Yahoo – "This squarely puts the pressure on Jerry Yang to deliver results and shareholder value," Standard & Poor's equity analyst Scott Kessler said. "You are going to see a lot of shareholders just throwing in the towel because they are going to realize it's going to take awhile for the stock to get back to where it was Friday" (Yahoo shares tumble in premarket trading with Microsoft out, May 5, 2008) – what does "throwing in the towel" mean?
My comments:
"Throwing in the towel" is a figurative expression here. No Yahoo shareholders are actually clutching any towels, nor are they throwing any away.
Towel-throwing originally comes from the game of boxing. In a boxing match, while the boxer fights in the ring, his coach sits outside watching the action clutching a white towel (for wiping sweat off of the player during the break between rounds). However, if the coach sees that his fighter is beaten up and sees enough of it, he may throw that towel into the ring to end the match right there. By boxing rules, a coach throwing in the towel is his signal to the referee that his camp accepts defeat. In other words, they surrender. And by throwing in the towel, the coach wants to spare his player any further punishment and the risk of injury.
In the case of Yahoo, their shares are falling sharply and some shareholders are not happy. By "throwing in the towel", they mean to say they've given up all hope of the price of their shares recovering any time soon, if at all. In other words, they consider the match (against Microsoft and the stock market) lost.
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