Knackered

/ˈnæk.əd/ · adjective

Meaning

(UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, slang, sometimes offensive) Tired or exhausted..

Definitions by Sense

1. (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, slang, sometimes offensive) Tired or exhausted.
2. simple past and past participle of knacker
3. (UK, Ireland, South Africa, colloquial) Broken, inoperative.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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

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

Synonyms for knackered

Antonyms for knackered

Related Words

Word Forms

• more knackered
• most knackered

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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