# Is 'Knackered' a rude word?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 8, 2012, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182 "2012-02-08T12:37:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Baron\_Skinley\_Von\_Clipper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Skinley_Von_Clipper)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/21 "2012-02-08T22:37:32Z")
> [@chiroptera](#):
>
> it appears the word has grown a connotation or two of late. I probably haven’t used the word in three decades.
I think the opposite is true, the word has become less offensive over time.
In my experience, growing up in the London area in the 70’s, older people were more likely to be offended by the word.
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### Author:  [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2012, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/22 "2012-02-08T22:44:50Z")
I was told as a boy that “knackered” means “sexually exhausted”.
It is used more generally to mean tired out. If it really does have a sexual connotation, it seems most people are unaware of it.
As pointed out above, “knacker” in Ireland is a very offensive word for someone from the Travelling community, so people would be cautious of saying “knackered” for that reason.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/23 "2012-02-08T22:53:20Z")
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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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/24 "2012-02-08T23:05:18Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:17, topic:612182”]
In my 30 years of working as a writer and editor in the United States, I’ve never heard that word.
[/QUOTE]
I have never heard it in US English, but it’s quite common (in my experience) with UK English. I’ve never noted any rude or impolite connotation to it.
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### Author:  [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2012, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/25 "2012-02-08T23:21:48Z")
These days it’s only rude to people who consider ‘bum’ and ‘crap’ to be terribly rude words and think girls shouldn’t whistle, i.e. my Dad. I doubt you’d meet anyone under 50 who was offended by it.
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/26 "2012-02-09T00:54:08Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#):
>
> These days it’s only rude to people who consider ‘bum’ and ‘crap’ to be terribly rude words and think girls shouldn’t whistle, i.e. my Dad. I doubt you’d meet anyone under 50 who was offended by it.
“Bum” is considered extremely rude in the US. You’re supposed to call them “homeless”. 😃
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### Author:  [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/27 "2012-02-09T01:53:20Z")
I’ve never heard of the post sex meaning but my mum disliked the word, because it was vulgar I assumed. Supposedly the cockney rhyming slang is cream crackered but the only person I know who uses that is a Yorkshireman.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/28 "2012-02-09T02:05:54Z")
I too was taught it was “tired after sex” in the playground, but that meaning evaporated as I became an adult. I wonder if it’s just one of those kid ULs.
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### Author:  [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/29 "2012-02-09T02:28:50Z")
In Australia knackered means you were only fit for the knacker’s yard, worn out etc.
Knackers is also slang for your gonads.
Most people wouldn’t be offended but I wouldn’t use it in a business meeting.
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### Author:  [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/30 "2012-02-09T02:40:49Z")
I’ve only heard it in the dead horse context. And indeed I learned the word from James Herriot books when I was a kid.
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### Author:  [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/31 "2012-02-09T02:46:17Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> I have never heard it in US English, but it’s quite common (in my experience) with UK English. I’ve never noted any rude or impolite connotation to it.
Does anyone else get the sense it’s catching on here? I’ll bet in five years, everyone will be saying it.
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### Author:  [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/32 "2012-02-09T03:01:10Z")
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 “[niggardly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22) confusion”. I can imagine a word that is associated with common speech becomes suspect of actually being offensive.
Etymology online seems _somewhat_ [inconclusive](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=knackered&searchmode=none), 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.
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### Author:  [@radar1974](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/radar1974)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/33 "2012-02-09T05:26:06Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/34 "2012-02-09T06:22:28Z")
My computer dictionary:
> [@](#):
>
> ORIGIN late 16th cent. (originally denoting a harness-maker, then a slaughterer of horses): possibly from obsolete knack ‘trinket’ The word also had the sense ‘old worn-out horse’ (late 18th cent). It is unclear whether the verb represents a figurative use of ‘slaughter,’ from the noun sense, or of ‘castrate,’ from a slang sense of the noun, ‘testicles.’
[**The Online Etymology Dictionary**](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=knacker&searchmode=none):
> [@](#):
>
> usually in past tense, knackered, “to kill, castrate” (1855), but most often used in weakened sense of “to tire out” (1883); apparently from knacker (n.) “worn-out or useless horse,” 1812, of unknown origin; possibly from a dialectal survival of a Scandinavian word represented by O.N. hnakkur “saddle,” hnakki “back of the neck,” and thus possibly related to neck (n.).
**Edit:** Saw after posting that gracer beat me to the Etymology Dictionary.
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/35 "2012-02-09T07:50:06Z")
_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.
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### Author:  [@radar1974](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/radar1974)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/36 "2012-02-09T08:02:37Z")
> [@UDS](#):
>
> _knackered_, the feeling you have after you’ve been slaughtered and boiled down for glue.
I know THAT feeling 😃
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### Author:  [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/37 "2012-02-09T08:19:48Z")
Old English playground joke from the 80’s:-
What’s the difference between a fit bird and an unsurfaced road?
One knackers your tyres, and the other tires your knackers.
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### Author:  [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/38 "2012-02-09T08:21:09Z")
NM
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### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/39 "2012-02-09T09:34:59Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> I too was taught it was “tired after sex” in the playground, but that meaning evaporated as I became an adult. I wonder if it’s just one of those kid ULs.
I think you’re probably on to something there. A bit like the African bum disease.
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2012, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-knackered-a-rude-word/612182/40 "2012-02-09T11:35:40Z")
Slightly OT, but clearly related. **Bollocks**. I think the one time I have had a posting killed by a moderator on a list was when I used the word. Bollocks aka knakers, aka testicles, was considered rude. However for bollocks we have a very famous [legal opinion](http://www.acc.umu.se/~samhain/summerofhate/courtcase.html) that differs. The etymology of bollocks presented is rather interesting in its own right.
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