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• browned-off
  browned-off

  adjective

  thoroughly discouraged or disheartened; fed up
• browned off
  browned off

  Very angry, as in When she locked me out I was really browned off. This expression originated as Royal Air Force slang for “disgusted” and “depressed” in the late 1930s and had crossed the Atlantic by World War II. It gradually came to be used more widely as a slangy synonym for “infuriated.” One theory for its origin, mentioned by Eric Partridge in his slang dictionary, is that it alludes to brass buttons on a uniform turning brown from lack of polishing. Partridge noted, however, that the “predominant Army opinion” was that the word had the same literal meaning as buggered.

browned-off

British  

adjective

1. informal thoroughly discouraged or disheartened; fed up

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browned off Idioms  

1. Very angry, as in When she locked me out I was really browned off. This expression originated as Royal Air Force slang for “disgusted” and “depressed” in the late 1930s and had crossed the Atlantic by World War II. It gradually came to be used more widely as a slangy synonym for “infuriated.” One theory for its origin, mentioned by Eric Partridge in his slang dictionary, is that it alludes to brass buttons on a uniform turning brown from lack of polishing. Partridge noted, however, that the “predominant Army opinion” was that the word had the same literal meaning as buggered.

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Example Sentences

The browned-off marines in Iceland solemnly assessed the place as the "sinkhole of the world," but there was never a word of complaint in Smith's letters to his family in the U.S.

From Time Magazine Archive

Related Words

• desperate
• enraged
• fierce
• frantic
• frenetic
• frenzied
• incensed
• livid
• raging
• vehement
• violent