out of commission

1. Not in working order, unable to function. For example, The drawbridge is out of commission so we'll have to take the tunnel. This idiom originally referred to a ship that was laid up for repairs or held in reserve. Similarly, the antonym, in commission, referred to a ship armed and ready for action. The latter term is also used in more general contexts today, as in My car's back in commission now, so we can drive to the theater. [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

Both the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini plants were out of commission following the tsunami, creating a shortage in the electricity supply.

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The Palisades fire put three campuses out of commission in the nation’s second-largest school system.

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“This one’s gone, that one’s gone and this little guy’s almost out of commission. You see where it’s coming apart right here?”

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I thought I was gonna be out of commission for 18 months or two years — that’s what I was told.

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He’d heard about the bus shortage — roughly three-quarters of the department’s inmate transport buses were out of commission — and wondered if that kind of large-scale evacuation was really possible.

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