downer
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See also: Downer
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈdaʊnə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈdaʊnɚ/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -aʊnə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
[edit]Noun
[edit]downer (plural downers)
- (slang) A negative drug trip.
- Normally those pills give me a boost, but last night they gave me a downer.
- (slang) A drug that has depressant qualities.
- (slang) Something or someone disagreeable, dispiriting or depressing; a killjoy.
- 2009, Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are:
- You don't really need to know me. I'm kind of a downer.
- 2010, Nicole LaPorte, The Men Who Would Be King:
- Geffen had never understood why such a downer of a film was being released over the holidays.
- A livestock animal that has collapsed.
- 1964, John Hendrix, If I Can Do It Horseback: A Cow-Country Sketchbook, page 40:
- The ten-dollar bill was for eating money and the prod pole to be used when the train stopped for water in getting "downers" back on their feet.
- 2009, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, Hallmark/Westland Meat Recall:
- In 1993, Farm Sanctuary produced undercover footage of downers being lifted by forklift at Hallmark, prompting introduction of a California downer cattle law the next year. Either management provided instructions to get the downers moving or was asleep at the wheel and let employees run wild — in either case, it's an indictment of management.
- 2009, Meat & Poultry - Volume 55, Issues 7-12, page lxxii:
- The two plants where I saw great reductions in downers have reduced, but not eliminated Paylean use.
- A form of industrial action in which workers down tools and refuse to work.
- 1978, C. T. B. Smith, Great Britain. Dept. of Employment, Manpower Papers (issue 15, page 158)
- In the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, a strike may be a downer or a stoppage as defined by the Department.
- 1985, Alex Callinicos, Mike Simons, The Great Strike: The Miners' Strike of 1984-5 and Its Lessons:
- Cowley experienced a rash of 'downers' — short, sharp, unofficial strikes.
- 1978, C. T. B. Smith, Great Britain. Dept. of Employment, Manpower Papers (issue 15, page 158)
Synonyms
[edit]- (something or someone disagreeable): buzzkill, killjoy, spoilsport; see also Thesaurus:spoilsport
Related terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]- German: Downer
Translations
[edit]drug
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Etymology 2
[edit]Perhaps related to tanner (“sixpence”).
Noun
[edit]downer (plural downers)
- (UK, slang, obsolete) A sixpence.
- 1859, Snowden's magistrates assistant, page 90:
- The price of a case (five shillings piece bad) from the smasher is about one shilling; an alderman (two and sixpence) about sixpence; a peg (shilling) about threepence; a downer or sprat (sixpence) about twopence.
References
[edit]- John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary
Anagrams
[edit]German
[edit]Adjective
[edit]downer
Categories:
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- Rhymes:English/aʊnə(ɹ)
- Rhymes:English/aʊnə(ɹ)/2 syllables
- English terms suffixed with -er (relational)
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English slang
- English terms with usage examples
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- British English
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- en:Drugs
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