downer

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See also: Downer

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From down +‎ -er.

Noun

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downer (plural downers)

  1. (slang) A negative drug trip.
    Normally those pills give me a boost, but last night they gave me a downer.
  2. (slang) A drug that has depressant qualities.
  3. (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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
Synonyms
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Descendants
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  • German: Downer
Translations
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Etymology 2

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Perhaps related to tanner (sixpence).

Noun

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downer (plural downers)

  1. (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
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  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

Anagrams

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German

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Adjective

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downer

  1. inflection of down:
    1. strong/mixed nominative masculine singular
    2. strong genitive/dative feminine singular
    3. strong genitive plural