Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. exhausted.

1942		P. Larkin letter 11 Dec. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 49: Well, I hope you aren’t feeling as buggered as I am. Christ knows why, but I’ve had a day in bed feeling like nothing on earth.
1963		K. Waterhouse Jubb (1966) 25: When I get up, over an hour later, I was buggered! I was, I was buggered.
1969		A. Buzo Rooted I i: Are you tired, darling? [...] I’m a bit buggered myself.
1975		A. Bleasdale Scully 125: I was so buggered that it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.
1981		A. Weller Day of the Dog 134: He doesn’t care if it is Jamie, who has lapsed into his brusque mood and who will tell him off for being slack. He is just so buggered.
1985		R.G. Barrett You Wouldn’t Be Dead for Quids (1989) 84: He arrived home absolutely buggered.
1993		G. Disher Deathdeal [ebook] ‘Too buggered to muck around’.
1999		A. O’Hagan Our Fathers 151: The legs buggered?
2000		(con. 1974) Z. Smith White Teeth 11: Her mind is gone. Buggered.
2015		N. Cummins Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] I don’t know who was more buggered but my reputation was intact.

2. of machinery, not working; of a person, confused, injured.

1945		E. Rutherford 11 May diary in Garfield Our Hidden Lives (2004) 23: We came home from work on Monday evening, ‘bewitched, buggered and bewildered’ as a friend of ours used to say.
1960		J. Iggulden Storms of Summer 88: After that she’s buggered for years.
1977		(con. 1962) J. Rosenthal Spend, Spend, Spend Scene 52: Shooting-brake buggered again?
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 99: If something is buggered, or stuffed and it’s your fault, you tubed it.
1989		S. Armitage ‘The Civilians’ in Zoom 63: Behind the hen-house the jalopy is snookered: / its bodywork sound, / its engine buggered.
1989		(con. 1984) P. Theroux My Secret Hist. (1990) 484: The car was buggered and wouldn’t start.
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) xix: Gazin’ head-on into the boom box with this buggered glint in his eye.
1999		P. Temple Black Tide (2012) [ebook] [of a house] ‘Own your house?’ ‘Buggered old place, fetch a bit though’.
2004		T. Winton ‘Fog’ in Turning (2005) 244: His legs are buggered.

3. defeated, destroyed.

1922		‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 123: ‘They’ve been properly buggered these last days.’ He very bluntly told the Adjutant the harmfulness of the bullying we’d had.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 190: We’re buggered. It’s just heat an’ flies an’ bombs an’ ya mates gettin’ knocked.
1963		‘Nino Culotta’ Gone Fishin’ 18: Atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, sputniks, phenoma-wotsanames—they got the climate buggered.
1973		A. Salkey ‘Because of 1865’ Jamaica (1983) 45: Wasted plantations, / buggered economy.
1981		A. Weller Day of the Dog 2: Ya really buggered this time, Dougo. Too much gabba, what ya reckon?