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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 )

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

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

But the wide berth has probably only hastened the unfortunate animal's exit to the knacker's yard.

From The Guardian • Dec. 7, 2010

Go barter to the knacker's yard    The steed that has outlived its time!

From Songs of Action by Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir