knackered

English

WOTD – 17 October 2010

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnæk.əd/

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Etymology 1

From the verb knacker.

Adjective

knackered (comparative more knackered, superlative most knackered)

1. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, sometimes offensive) Tired or exhausted.
   • 2002, Robert Edenborough, Effective Interviewing: A Handbook of Skills and Techniques, pages 97–98:

     I've got this job in a warehouse just now and it finishes quite early but I'm dead knackered at the end of the day so I don't know about going out and like studying every night.

   • 2003, Hugh Dauncey, Geoff Hare (editors), The Tour de France, 1903-2003: A Century of Sporting Structures, Meanings and Values, Frank Cass Publishers, London, 2005, page 225,

     Then, it all just gets worse and worse, you don't sleep so much, so you don't recover as well from the day's racing, so you go into your reserves, you get more knackered, so you sleep less... It's simply a vicious circle.

   • 2009, Grace Maxwell, Falling & Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins, page 84:

     So my joy at hearing his voice quickly turns to a paroxysm of anxiety as he manages by exhausted gesture and sound to let us know how knackered he feels, how desperate to get horizontal, almost from the first moment he lands in the chair.

   • 2020 November 12, Jim O’Driscoll, Offensive Language: Taboo, Offence and Social Control, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 48:

     In the course of this discussion, the (male) presenter, when uttering the word 'knackered', felt obliged to preface his animation of this word with “excuse my language”.

Usage notes

Formerly considered a rude word – possibly implying that the subject was exhausted from having sex, perhaps due to conflation with knackers (“testicles”) – and still considered offensive by some (primarily older British people).

Synonyms

• (tired, exhausted): cream crackered; See also Thesaurus:fatigued

Derived terms

• cream crackered (Cockney rhyming slang)
• Kerry Packered (Cockney rhyming slang)

Translations

extremely tired or exhausted

• Bulgarian: уморен (bg) m (umoren)
• Catalan: esgotat (ca), destrossat, fet pols (ca), plegat en dos
• Dutch: kapot (nl)
• Finnish: sippi, sipissä, puhki (fi), poikki (fi)
• French: éreinté (fr), claqué (fr), HS (fr), avoir la tête dans le cul (fr)
• German: gerädert (de), erledigt (de), fertig (de), fix und fertig (de) (coll. / idiomatic)
• Hungarian: kimerült (hu), nagyon fáradt
• Italian: straccato (it), sfibrato (it), spossato (it)
• Scottish Gaelic: claoidhte
• Spanish: agotado (es), reventado (es), harto (es), para el arrastre
• Swedish: slut (sv), slutkörd (sv), utmattad (sv)
• Welsh: wedi blino'n lân, wedi ymlâdd

Verb

knackered

1. simple past and past participle of knacker

Etymology 2

From "ready for the knacker's yard" or "fit to be knackered", meaning "worn-out livestock, fit to be slaughtered and rendered".

Adjective

knackered (comparative more knackered, superlative most knackered)

1. (UK, Ireland, South Africa, colloquial) Broken, inoperative.
   • 2003, Simon Murphy, The Murders of Mutchrose Village, page 28:

     In the end though he had to admit that the car was knackered...

   • 2009, John Newton, Vance Miller - Kitchen Gangster?, page 82:

     We take an old knackered machine out to China and say, 'Copy that, brand new,' and they do.

Synonyms

• (broken, inoperative): broken, worn-out; See also Thesaurus:out of order

Translations

broken, inoperative

• Finnish: sippi, sipannut
• French: foutu (fr), HS (fr), baisé (fr), détraqué (fr), fichu (fr)
• Italian: spacciato (it), fritto (it)
• Spanish: roto (es), gastado (es), estropeado (es), averiado (es), jodido (es), para el arrastre, hecho unos zorros

Related terms

• knacker
• knacker's yard