knacker's yard
Britishnoun
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a slaughterhouse for horses
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informal destruction because of being beyond all usefulness (esp in the phrase ready for the knacker's yard )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In the first book she rescues her prize horse, Storm, from a knacker's yard.
From The Guardian • Jul. 27, 2013
Having saved their historic building from the knacker's yard in 1993, the Horse Hospital is now gearing up to celebrate 20 years of alternative pop-cultural purveyance.
From The Guardian • Feb. 2, 2013
Photograph: Tom Jenkins The London 2012 chairman, Lord Coe, has claimed that proposed changes to the list of banned substances that would differentiate between recreational and performance-enhancing drugs represent "the morality of the knacker's yard".
From The Guardian • Jul. 27, 2011
But the wide berth has probably only hastened the unfortunate animal's exit to the knacker's yard.
From The Guardian • Dec. 7, 2010
They take such a liking to this fare that, in two or three weeks, the floor of the cage is a knacker's yard strewn with heads and empty thoraces, with torn-off wings and disjointed legs.
From The Wonders of Instinct Chapters in the Psychology of Insects by Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
