I hope you don't mind helping out someone from 'across the pond' with a question about language. More specifically it's the derivation of the word 'knackered'.As a piece of background, the mother of a friend of mine was shocked and annoyed at me for saying 'I felt knackered' when asked how I was feeling. For my part I believed it to be a common enough expression for tiredness. I, and many others, use it, not just for a human feeling, but also to describe the state of inanimate objects. 'That car is knackered' for a vehicle that has broken down.

'Knackered' meaning tired, exhausted or broken in British and Irish slang is commonly used in Australia, Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The term 'knacker' is sometimes used in Ireland to denote an Irish Traveller. We are quite chuffed, meaning pleased or delighted, to bring you all of these delightful British words and sayings. Similarly, knackered is the colloquial way of saying tired. Example: We bet.

'The laptop is completely knackered' is a computer that won't reboot (well, you get the picture).After a half-hearted apology I dared to ask her why she was offended by the word and she explained it is only supposed to mean 'tiredness after sexual activity'. This was a complete revelation to me, and I have not been able to find evidence that she is correct. Can any of you help?As a side note, the slang word 'knackers' is often used to describe male rude bits (well it is in the UK, not sure if the word has made it over to the US). Could this be where her mistake lies, or have we derived the word 'knackers' from 'knackered' in the first place and she is completely right to scold me for using the term.

In my part of the world, kicked in the knackers = kicked in the balls, but 'knackered' has no such connotation (though 'knacker' in any form is rarely used here).Familiar by many may be the British TV series —picked up by PBS in the States — All Creatures Great and Small (from the books), about a pair of pre- and postwar veterinarians, in which the term 'knacker's,' or 'knacker's yard' is used repeatedly as the place, as mentioned above, where dead animals were taken. Its use, then and now, is innocent.' Knackered,' though, means exhausted, probably from 'knacker's yard.'

Nothing is more exhausted than dead. There's nothing offensive about it. Yeah, but he was scottish.AYE YA IS FOOKIN KNACKERED MON.LOL.I grew up in Scotland in the late 60s through the 1970s, and to me 'knackered' = exhausted, tired, wiped out. Nothing more and nothing less, and I used to use the word in that exact context. I'm also aware of the word as it relates to dead animals and the people who picked them up. Which is where (until today) I assume the phrase came to mean really, really tired.That was then and this is now; it appears the word has grown a connotation or two of late.

I probably haven't used the word in three decades. I'd never heard the sexual connotation before reading this thread. It is hardly a common word in the Great Lakes region, so 'knacker' was always the guy who hauled away dead livestock carcasses and 'knackered' was always really tired, to the point of being worn out like an overused draught horse 'on its last legs.' (Even then, I doubt I have heard it much outside the circle of my in-laws among whom are many, many farriers and farmers.)(I guess I could see it being used after a really exhausting bout of sexual activity, but I would have assumed the 'tired/on my last legs' meaning without thinking that 'knackered,' itself, carried a sexual connotation.

Is it regional? Is it generational?).

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Huh, never heard the sex-connotation before. I really like the word, it seems such a good description of being really tired. And I can use it in front of my upper-middle class gran with no problem.Anyway, I always associated it with the knacker as well (and using a word that means 'balls' for 'tired after sex' doesn't make sense to me). The whole thing rather smells of the ' confusion'. I can imagine a word that is associated with common speech becomes suspect of actually being offensive.Etymology online seems somewhat, relating it to castration but locating its origins in the dead horse region. But I think I'd still call that a win for the dead-horse-camp. As the original poster, just wanted to say thank you for all your responses.

I can't believe I never associated the word with 'knacker's yard', which I have heard many times on British TV (if anyone remembers Steptoe and Son (remade in the US as Sanford and Son I believe) it was used almost every episode.Just to push the question again though, does anyone have any idea of the origin of the actual word 'knackered'? What I mean is, if it comes from the same source as 'knacker's yard' where did they get 'knacker' from as well?Thanks again everyone for your input, this is genuinely fascinating, and great to hear how people first heard or learnt the word. Knackers meaning testicles and knackered meaning tired have different roots.Knack, a verb meaning to knock or to strike sounding blows goes back to the fifteenth century. From that sense we get knackers, a seventeenth-century term for a musical instrument like a pair of castanets, involving two hinged pieces of wood which are knocked together to produce a sound. And from the nineteenth century the word starts to get applied to a pair of testicles. You can see why.Then we have knack, a noun meaning a trick or artifice, or an adroit or ingenious manner of accomplishing something.

This sense survives in phrases like “he is forever breaking the rules, but he has the knack of avoiding detection”. From this we get another sense, a clever contrivance or modification to some object. This kind of knack may improve the utility of the object, or it may be ornamental.

From this, it’s though, we get knacker, a saddler or harness-maker (sixteenth century), and from this we get knacker, one who buys worn-out horses, slaughters them and renders them down for glue and leather. And that gives us knacker, a verb, meaning to slaughter and boil down for glue, which gives us knackered, the feeling you have after you’ve been slaughtered and boiled down for glue.The notion that knackered refers specifically to exhaustion through sexual excess probably comes from a comparatively recent conflation of the two words. Until comparatively recently everyone knew what a knacker did and what went on in a knacker’s yard, and it would not have occurred to them that knackered had any sexual connotation.I grew up in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s and knackered was a colloquial, informal word for “tired”, with no sexual connotations. We were also familiar with knackers meaning testicles, but did not consider that there was a link.

Knacker meaning an intinerant traveler was derogatory. It referred to the fact that travelers used to deal in (generally low-grade) horses. In this context it isn't.

It specifically refers to, not Roma or other groups.Fascinating. Estimated 10,000 to 40,000 in USA!In Ulysses (and no doubt the Wake) Joyce has Stephen Daedalus recite a love poem (meaningless to almost everybody w/o a translation/concordance).The standard concordance says that it is 'gypsy cant.' I dont know the difference between Roma and Traveller cant, but it seems that the encyclopedic Joyce would have anything but an Irish-sourced cant.I'd be happy to supply line references-or copy over the text of the poem to- this threadin Ulysses (it is now on-line for free) and the translation of the lines, as given by the concordance (author's name forgotten at the moment).