Green’s Dictionary of Slang

of objects, broken, battered, esp. of a car with notable damage to the panel-work; of people, beaten up, injured, wounded.

[c.1580		‘I.T.’ Grim The Collier of Croydon IV i: He was well bang’d, and knew not who it was did it].
1899		H. Garland Boy Life on the Prairie 9401: I guess my leg’s banged up a little; it’s numb.
1913		H.S. Truman letter 30 Sept. in Ferrell Dear Bess (1983) 137: Hoffman’s man tried to sell us an old banged-up Hinze piano.
1927		B. Cormack Racket Act II: Afraid the witness’d get banged, uh?
1937		J.T. Farrell ‘A Sunday in April’ in Fellow Countrymen (1937) 438: I don’t want my Toots getting banged up.
1949		N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 67: I lost my taste for the booze the night Zosh got banged up.
1955		H. Ellson ‘Killer’ in Best of Manhunt (2019) [ebook] ‘But we’re not going to leave any record of a banged-up green Buick with Missouri plates stopping anywhere for gas’.
1958		R. Prather Scrambled Yeggs 145: You’d better get this man to the hospital. He’s pretty well banged up.
1967		M. Braly On the Yard (2002) 206: How did Turnipseed get so badly banged up?
1970		B. Seale Seize the Time 125: The stairs were all banged up and half the building torn apart.
1974		(con. late 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 594: But sure picked a fine time to get yourself banged up.
1978		F. Norman Dead Butler Caper 72: I know she’s pretty banged up [...] But you look like a mechanic with hands like a surgeon.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 184: He’s really all banged up.
1985		(con. 1968) D.A. Dye Citadel (1989) 287: Doc said he’d be banged up pretty bad but he wouldn’t lose anything.
1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 67: The bridge is so banged up — pounded on and painted over, rusted up and painted again.
1989		T. Blacker Fixx 305: Psychos, junkies, banged-up teenies.
1992		R.C. Cruz Straight Outta Compton 82: Who got banged up? I ask him. Who got banged up?
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 281: Her banged-up yellow Volkswagen Bug.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 310: They saw me and my banged-up Corvair.
2000		Guardian Guide 15–21 Jan. 13: Nobody’s going to realise how banged-up and bruised I was.
2003		C. Stella Charlie Opera 64: I saw the guy was banged up [...] I saw his head was bandaged.
2011		J.J. DeCeglie Drawing Dead [ebook] I was a little banged up but I’d live.
2011		D.R. Pollock Devil All the Time 96: A couple of banged-up beaters sat in the parking lot.
2013		T. Dorsey Riptide Ultra-Glide 96: I was able to [...] tell the banged-up driver that I’d represent him and get some big bucks.
2019		Guardian 27 May 22/4: Eller arrived at hospital ‘pretty banged up, but mentally in perfect shape’.
2023		F. Bill Back to the Dirt 244: [H]e got in his banged-up El Camino [...] Firing up the vehicle, shifting to drive, he navigated down the gravel.