What does buggered mean?
'Buggered' is a chiefly British informal adjective describing someone utterly exhausted or something broken beyond use. Saying 'I'm buggered' after a long day is equivalent to saying you are worn out or drained, while 'the washing machine's buggered' means it has stopped working for good. It also serves as the past participle of the vulgar verb 'to bugger', giving it a secondary sense of 'ruined' or 'botched', as in 'he's buggered up the accounts'. Because of these origins, the word carries mild vulgarity: it is ubiquitous in casual British conversation but inappropriate in formal writing, professional settings, or polite company, and American audiences may find it coarser than Britons do. Its closest synonym in tone and usage is 'knackered'. Despite its crude pedigree, the word is vivid, versatile, and deeply embedded in everyday British idiom, making it useful to recognise even for those who would never use it themselves.
Exhausted or worn out; also, broken or not functioning.
"Don't ask me to move anything — I'm completely buggered."
Informal and mildly vulgar; standard in casual British English.
Past participle of 'to bugger': ruined, botched, or put into a bad state.
"He's buggered the whole presentation by forgetting the files."
Often strengthened as 'buggered up'; vulgar register.
'Buggered' traces back to a medieval slur about Bulgarians — heretics so notorious that their name became an English swear word.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of buggered
'Buggered' derives from the verb 'bugger', which entered English in the 16th century from French 'bougre', ultimately from Medieval Latin 'Bulgarus' ('Bulgarian') — a reference to the Bogomil heretics of Bulgaria, whom medieval Western Europeans associated with supposed sexual deviance. The adjective/past-participle form 'buggered' developed in British English, first in the vulgar literal sense and later, by the 19th to 20th centuries, in its now-dominant extended senses of 'exhausted' and 'broken'. Cognates include French 'bougre' and the derived noun 'buggery'.
Related word forms
How buggered is actually used
'Buggered' is strongly informal and mildly vulgar in British English, where it is extremely common in casual speech; it is less frequent and may read as more jarring in American English. Avoid it in professional or polite contexts. The 'exhausted' sense is by far the most common today.
Easily confused with buggered
'Bugged' means annoyed or fitted with a listening device, while 'buggered' means exhausted or broken.
'Bogged' means stuck or mired (often 'bogged down'), whereas 'buggered' means worn out or ruined.