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Someone used this word -- in the sense of "exhausted" -- last week, and apologised for the bad language.
I have to spring to its defence! It's used in an ironic or metaphorical way, deriving from knacker: someone who slaughters old or infirm animals, and, by extension, the animal itself.
Besides, it can't be rude -- it was used by Morecambe and Wise on the BBC in the 1970s, and you can't get much more respectable than the Beeb.
P.S. The spell checker suggests knockers or knickers!
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Knackered
Someone used this word -- in the sense of "exhausted" -- last week, and apologised for the bad language. I have to spring to its defence! It's used in an ironic or metaphorical way, deriving from knacker: someone who slaughters old or infirm animals, and, by extension, the animal itself. Besides, it can't be rude -- it was used by Morecambe and Wise on the BBC in the 1970s, and you can't get much more respectable than the Beeb.
P.S. The spell checker suggests knockers or knickers!
Re: "Knackered"
"Besides, it can't be rude -- it was used by Morecambe and Wise on the BBC in the 1970s, and you can't get much more respectable than the Beeb."
you can't get more respectable than the beeb? - you are forgetting the whole Johnathon Ross thing recently...
Also in Ireland 'knacker' is used a derogatory term for the Travellers and has actually been banned as non-pc.
Re: "Knackered"
I always thought that knackered meant 'ballsed - up'. In other words, it's knackered or it doesn't work any more.
Re: "Knackered"
Yep, I have to agree: I remember once proclaiming I was 'knackered', when I was about 7 years old (obviously having heard grown-ups using the term to mean 'tired'), my nan promptly gave me a sharp clip round the ear, leaving me confused as to what I had done wrong this time! My mum, by the way, had meanwhile gone a lovely shade of deep purple, knowing full-well where and whom I had picked the word up from, I do remember that she didn't own up or stick up for me in any way, leaving me more confused than ever. A good time to introduce a new phrase:'do as I say, not as I do'! Your childhood years are meant to be the best of your life. What a shame that they're often so confusing that it leaves you confused as to what you're meant to tell your own children off for, and what you're supposed to condone!
Re: "Knackered"
At the bottom of the back page of Saturday's "Times" is a full width advertisement placed by BUPA as sponsors of the Great North Run. Emblazoned across the centre of the ad in large bold type is the phrase "feeling knackered".
Does this solve the thread?
Re: "Knackered"
I seem to remember when I was teenager, (a long time ago- okay in the 60s), to be knackered was specifically to be tired after you'd had a bit of the other. We all tried to pretend that we were knackered every morning. Lies, lies lies!!!
It's not used that way these days, so isn't rude any more.
Nick Powell
Re: "Knackered"
Ah, knackered... an interesting one.
The now-defunct Broadcasting Standards Council produced a list of the words considered most shocking in 2000 (in assocation with the BBC and the Advertising Standards Authority - you can find their findings here:
http://www.bsc.org.uk/pdfs/research/delete.pdf
[Two words of warning - firstly, this is a pdf document and so you'll need to have Acrobat reader installed; secondly, as you might expect THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF LANGUAGE CONSIDERED TO BE SHOCKING AND OFFENSIVE.]
Knackered doesn't make the list at all.
I suspect it's double life as considered a bit rude and simulatneously acceptable for Morecambe and Wise is down to there being two knackereds - one, derived from the slaughterhouse and knacker's yard, meaning tired; the other, the noun knacker, meaning the testicles.
Re: "Knackered"
I enjoying reading that 'knackered' used to be a very specific sort of 'tired'. (I've even learnt a new phrase - 'a bit of the other' - at the same time.) Reminded me of the term 'shagged out'... My friends used it a lot as teenagers 10 years ago to mean 'tired' in the ordinary sense, but now I've discovered I can't say it any more, because people think I mean something rather too specific!
Re: "Knackered"
Shag as a polite word for what Sir Humphrey once described as "vertical jogging" is a relatively young use, isn't it?
It's slowly been taking over from that previous tabloid favourite, the "bonk."
The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't really know where it came from, but it's notable that the recent citations come from The Thorn Birds, the Melbourne National Review and Germaine Greer - in other words, it seems to have been popularised by Australians.
Re: "Knackered"
I am surprised at your comment.
Memory may deceive but I am sure I first heard 'shagging' on a Hampshire playground around 1970. This was well before the 'Thornbirds'.
I recall 'bonking' or 'knocking' from the early 1980s.
Re: "Knackered"
I think the definitive use of 'shag' was in BBC's Blackadder when General Melchett is explaining to the lovely 'Bobby' that 'Blackadder does a good line in rough shag, I'm sure he'd be happy to fill your pipe!'.
Re: "Knackered"
I'd imagine that the OED needs something to appear in print before it can use it as a citation.
Which raises something I find interesting: is it me, or does slang move a lot more swiftly into the mainstream media these days?
Re: "Knackered"
Slang IS the mainstream media these days!
Re: "Knackered"
I'm sure that "shag", predates "bonk", (linguistically that is!). In fact I think that no less an authority than Jeremy Beadle coined the word "bonk"- not exactly a recommendation!
Also to be "shagged", as in tired doesn't really have a sexual connotation as far as I understand. It's slang, but not rude slang.
Nick P
Re: "Knackered"
While it pains me to disagree with Jeremy Beadle, I think he may be deluding himself a little - the OED's citation for bonk as term for sexual intercourse dates it from Foul magazine (I suspect a football title rather than a cry of disgust) in 1974. It's possible Beadle was writing for the magazine at the time, but...
The other interesting thing to note from the OED on bonk is that the earliest appearance of "bonking" in that sense from a British newspaper comes not, as you might expect, from a red top tabloid - but from the Daily Telegraph.
The dual meaning of shag as sexual and exhaustion is curious, isn't it? Knackered supplies the same dual-use...
Re: "Knackered"
It also used to be said 'fit for the knackers'.