Green’s Dictionary of Slang

unsatisfactory, mixed up, useless [SE buggery + bugger up v.].

1923		J. Manchon Le Slang 74: All to buggery, foutu.
1989		D. Rutherford Game of Sudden Death 166: The solenoids in the metering room are all to buggery and the dials are flicking to and fro like dildos.
1999		P. Jackson Retake Please! 99: The electric gear was all to hell and the steering all to buggery.

a general intensifier, e.g. hot as buggery.

1891		Ballymena Obs. 23 Jan. 6/5: He asked how Srah Montgomery was getting on and what was the reason she did not come home, and Rea said that ‘she was as drunk as buggery and had fell and cut her brow’.
1953		D. Cusack Southern Steel 138: ‘And I’m as tired as buggery.’ ‘Too much grog,’ Landy commented self-righteously.
1960		W. Sheed Middle Class Education 42: One assumed that America had its own silly-as-buggery class system.
1977		(con. 1941) R. Beilby Gunner 63: Say, ya wouldn’t ’ave any water, would ya? I’m dry as bugg’ry.
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 125: Those kids are as proud as buggery of me.
1997		P. Boock Dare Truth or Promise 69: No money in clutch repairs, mate, they're fiddly as buggery.
2004		T. Winton ‘Immunity’ in Turning (2005) 294: ‘How was it?’ ‘Hot as buggery.’.
2009		E. Spain Old Haunts 20: ‘It’s cold as buggery.’ ‘Old building,’ I said .
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] It was as humid as buggery.
2013		K. Campbell This Is Where I Am 374: It’ll be roasting hot, it’ll stink the enamel off your teeth, break your heart — and it’s as dangerous as buggery.

of a person, completely defeated; of an object, wrecked beyond repair.

1916		A. John letter 16 Feb. in Holroyd Augustus John (1974) 363: Mark Gertler’s work has gone to buggery and I can’t stand it.
1960		‘Nino Culotta’ Cop This Lot 189: ‘The bloody train’s gone.’ ‘Wodda yer mean gone? Gone where?’ ‘Gone ter buggery. There’s only one carriage behind this one.’.
1962		S. Raven Close of Play (1986) 129: Anyhow, you’d look a bit of a fool telling Colonel Guy you wanted to go home because your old prep. school had gone to buggery .
1994		G. Brandreth diary 8 May Something Sensational to Read in the Train [ebook] As Michèle says, ‘That’s Back to Basics gone to buggery’.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 128: Related closely to insults are other negative aspects of our informal speech, particularly terms concerned with inefficiency, obsolescence, failure, and uselessness. These include [...] gone to buggery.
2006		M. Foster Blues for Shindig 134: My booze business has gone to buggery of late.

a general intensifier.

c.1900		‘Ramrod’ Nocturnal Meeting 72: Shove it up [...] ram me like buggery.
1927		(con. 1925) ‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 174: They say we ‘sweat like buggery’ in term-time.
1945		P. Larkin letter 9 Aug. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 104: He goes on to say that he is twenty-three and has done fuck-all, while other bastards of his acquaintance are forging ahead like buggery.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 161: I was going to work like buggery for him.
1958		A. Sillitoe Sat. Night and Sun. Morning 131: ‘They look after you in a factory.’ Like boggery he thought.
1976		D. Ireland Glass Canoe (1982) 87: Hurt like buggery. Stopped the blood in the old feller. Before I know it he’s hard again.
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 35: No-one spots you laughing like buggery.
1993		S. King Dolores Claiborne 140: It’ll prob’ly rain like a bugger that day.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 201: ‘This thing’s a friggin’ freak. It can sprint like buggery and stay all day and it leaves the friggin’ barrier like a startled ferret’.
2000		Penguin Bk of All-New Aus. Jokes 195: My thumb still hurts like buggery.
2004		C. Brookmyre Be My Enemy 193: Your thighs are aching like buggery.
2020		G. Disher Consolation 366: ‘Hurts like biuggery’.

(Aus.) far away or far off the mark.

1968		D. O’Grady A Bottle of Sandwiches 64: Cripes [...] Only went for a dip. Bloody current caught me. Carried me out to buggery.
1996		(con. 1950s) P. Doyle Get Rich Quick (2004) 85: I didn’t mind the idea of some activity, even if it was driving out to buggery to see the lunatic Croat.
2007		P. Temple Bad Debts 143: Have to draw youse a map. It’s out to buggery in the badlands.

to make a great deal of fuss.

1978

A. Burgess 1985 (1980) 151: I’ve got a missis that’ll play screaming buggery when I get home.

to play havoc with.

1953		M. Traynor Eng. Dial. Donegal 39: To play buggery with, to play havoc with. The weather played buggery with the crops the year.
c.2003		R. Gibson ‘Magic Pockets’ Rev. at AcornArcade.com 🌐 It plays buggery with all the available memory on your machine, and for this and other reasons it’s very hard to use.

1. (also to beggary, to boogery, to buggary) a synon. for to hell under hell n.

1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 286: I felt sort of melancholy to see him drifting away to beggary.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 21: I saw ’im, sir; ’e were just blown to buggery.
1945		N. Coward Diaries 8 Aug. (1982) 37: The atomic bomb which is going to revolutionize everything and blow us all to buggery.
1946		in D. Middleton Our Share of Night 86: We weren’t doing ’alf bad when one of their shells blew the tread to buggery.
1958		A. Sillitoe Sat. Night and Sun. Morning 125: Crawlin’ through woods and getting scratched to boogery in the brambles.
1964		N.B. Harvey Any Old Dollars, Mister? 116: I bet his Dad belts him to buggery.
1965		J. Orton Loot Act I: Your wreaths have been blown to buggery, Mr McLeavy.
1972		J. O’Grady It’s Your Shout, Mate! 28: They built her in the wrong place [...] Way to buggery inland. Adelaide should be down at Victor Harbour.
1975		A.M. Henry Lulu St. 102: Might as well blow them all to buggery.
1986		A. Bleasdale No Surrender 36: If I’d have hit a petrol tanker on the wrong side of the road, doin’ eighty-five miles an hour, an’ we’d all be burnt to buggery, you might have due cause to comment.
1993		A. Bleasdale On the Ledge 11: I am not going to be beaten to buggery ever again.
1996		P. Temple Bad Debts (2012) [ebook] The stable got such a fright when they saw the odds go to buggery.
1999		Guardian G2 24 June 9: Ponced up ... chintzed up ... festooned to buggery.
2000		T. Udo Vatican Bloodbath 48: Three English aristocrats dressed in absurd shooting clothes that, frankly, stank to buggery.
2005		J. Hawes Speak for England 51: [...] trying to find out if Harold bloody Macmillan and JF bloody Kennedy and Nikita sodding Khrushchev were about to blast us all to buggery or not.
2009		T. Black Gutted 101: Hod Arnie-ing it through this case, shooting all to buggery any chance I had of getting out of Dodge.

2. (also to boogery) to the limit, to extremes.

1960

A. Burgess Doctor Is Sick (1972) 145: She’ll be upset to beggary if she finds out that you’ve been carrying on with kinky blokes.

a general excl. of dismissal.

[1880		Docs of City of Boston I 17: We laid out to stop the horse with picks, and he said, ‘Clear out,’ and we let him go to buggery].
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) VI 1160: Go to hell and buggery, go and shit yourself, I don’t care a bloody fart where you go to.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 92: ‘What did he say?’ [...] ‘He told me to go to buggery.’.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 193: Go to ruddy stinkin’ flamin’ jiggery!
1944		A. Marshall These Are My People (1957) 55: ‘Well, I’ll go to buggary!’ exclaimed Bruiser.
1957		‘Nino Culotta’ They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 61: If yer too bloody pigheaded to take a warnin’, yer c’n go ter b———.
1959		G. Hamilton Summer Glare 89: I took the attitude that if girls didn’t like to dance with me [...] they could go to Burke or buggery.
1960		‘Nino Culotta’ Cop This Lot 36: ‘Is there anything I can get for you, Joe?’ ‘Yeah. Get ter buggery.’.
1962		A. La Guma Walk in the Night (1968) 26: Aw, go to buggery.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 38: buggery (Brit gay sl) hell fire, damnation. Applied facetiously ‘Oh, buggery! I’ve lost my wallet!’ Go to buggery! = go to blazes!
1977		in K. Gilbert Living Black 35: She’s got this sort of grinning, ‘Yus can all go to buggery’ attitude, you know?
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 11: One can [...] have ‘bugger all’ (nothing) or be told to ‘go to buggery’ (to piss off).
1997		B. Ellis Goodbye Jerusalem 293: Then in his flat, metallic, somehow genderless screechy monotone [he] said, ‘No, go to buggery.’ ‘What?’ said Mannix. ’Go to buggery. We’re sticking with our Labor Party’.
2010		A. Mallett Thommo Speaks Out 300: I just told them I had nothing to say, and to go to buggery and then I hung up.