Word.ws English Dictionary

knackered

UK/ˈnæk.əd/US/ˈnæk.ɚd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

knackered adjective: tired or exhausted. Also the simple past and past participle of knacker.

Adjective (1)

knackered (comparative more knackered, superlative most knackered)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, mildly, slang, vulgar) Tired or exhausted.
    • 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.2002, Robert Edenborough, Effective Interviewing: A Handbook of Skills and Techniques, pages 97–98
    • 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.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
    Synonyms:
    cream crackered

Adjective (2)

knackered (comparative more knackered, superlative most knackered)

  1. (Ireland, South Africa, UK, colloquial) Broken, inoperative.
    • In the end though he had to admit that the car was knackered...2003, Simon Murphy, The Murders of Mutchrose Village, page 28
    • We take an old knackered machine out to China and say, 'Copy that, brand new,' and they do.2009, John Newton, Vance Miller - Kitchen Gangster?, page 82
    Synonyms:
    broken, busted, worn-out

Also used as

knackered is also the simple past and past participle of knacker.

Synonyms of knackered

Forms of knackered

comparativemore knackered
superlativemost knackered

Origin of knackered

From the verb knacker.

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

Words formed from knackered

Questions about knackered

What does knackered mean?
Knackered means tired or exhausted.
What part of speech is knackered?
Knackered is an adjective.
How do you pronounce knackered?
Knackered is pronounced /ˈnæk.əd/ (UK).

Words near knackered in the dictionary

  1. knack
  2. knack-kneed
  3. knacked
  4. knacker
  5. knacker's yard
  6. knackered
  7. knackeredness
  8. knackeries
  9. knackering
  10. knackers
  11. knackers' yards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knackered (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-ncalif-knackered.ogg, en-au-knackered.ogg.

Cite this entry: “knackered.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knackered. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.