knacker's yard

British  

noun

1. a slaughterhouse for horses

2. informal destruction because of being beyond all usefulness (esp in the phrase ready for the knacker's yard )

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Example Sentences

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

Elizabeth Taylor brought Bagnold's novel about 12-year-old Velvet Brown, who saves a horse from a knacker's yard and trains it for the Grand National to vivid life, but the book is every bit as good.

From The Guardian • Jul. 21, 2011

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