Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. dead, killed; smashed; thus v. stonker, to kill.

1917		F.F. Whitelaw letter 6 Nov. in Kerang New Times (Vic/.) 8/01/18 2/8: Many a time we have had to go without tucker because the ration cart has been stonkered.
1919		Aussie (France) XIII Apr. 3/1: A dead Fritz inhabited a shell-hole [...]. ‘He’ll do!’ he said, and looped the wire round the stonkered one’s neck.
1944		P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: stonkered . . . shell struck.
1947		Syndey Morn. Herald 7 Feb. 7/6: There’ll be hell’s own trouble. You can’t stonker eight members of the Wehrmacht [...] without raising a stink.
1960		R.M. Muir Word for Word 253: They found her the next morning. She was well stonkered.

2. drunk.

1924		G.H. Lawson Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 STONKERED—To be very drunk.
1929		Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide) 11 Oct. 26/2: On the night of the tragedy he was pretty well stonkered.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Stonkered, very drunk.
1938		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 12 Sept. 6/3: I drink anything to make me drunk [...] I just drop into a hotel and get ‘stonkered’.
1940		F. Sargeson ‘A Man and his Wife’ in A Man And His Wife (1944) 75: We were all a bit stonkered.
1945		Williamstown Chron. (Vic.) 2 Feb. 1/2: You are half-stonkered.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 108/1: stonkered exhausted, outwitted, defeated, drunk.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 134: A number of terms for inebriation have crept into alcoholic use from the drug-culture lingo of the 1960s stonkered; smashed; out of it, and high, are some examples of this crossover.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2008		Tennessean (Nshville, TN) 27 Nov. 18A/3: It’s a bit rich for a man who got famously stonkered [...] to be lecturing the rest of us on binge drinking.

3. satiated.

1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 82: I reckon I’ve had an elegant sufficiency [...] I’m pretty stonkered.
2006		P. Carey Theft 90: When I was completely stonkered we all drove back.

4. beaten, defeated, in serious trouble.

1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 271: Stonkered: Put out of action.
1927		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 20 Aug. 11/2: Slanguage [...] Cross out the incorrect: word or phrase In the following sentences: ‘Napoleon was stonkered (stoushed) at Waterloo’.
1936		‘Banjo’ Paterson Shearer’s Colt 191: He [...] felt like an emperor, or, rather, like emperors used to feel before so many of them became ‘stonkered’ — if one may use the word.
1941		‘Ali Baba Morshead’ in M. Page Kiss Me Goodnight, Sgt.-Major (1973) 81: Then Rommel’s stonkered.
1961		B. Crump Hang On a Minute, Mate (1963) 52: But when it came to anything apart from horses he was absolutely stonkered.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 14: But when he comes rushing up – spittin’ chips, he’s so mad – young Dave only lets fly with one shot outa his ging, and the big bloke’s stonkered.
1988		McGill Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 201: To be stonkered is to be exhausted, outwitted, defeated, drunk, in dire trouble.
1992		K. Lette Llama Parlour 225: I rang off. We were stonkered. ‘Now what?’.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

5. confused.

1937		Courier Mail (Brisbane) 22 July 21/5: ‘Why don’t they shut off the confounded thing?’ ‘Too stonkered with surprise, I’ll bet’.
1950		Mail (Adelaide) 20 May 48/2: Expressions like ‘How’s his form?’ [...] had is ‘stonkered’ until we got used to them.

6. exhausted.

1932		L. Lower Here’s Another [ebook] In plain words which will touch the hearts of the local peasantry, it has us stonkered .
1934		Sun. Times (Perth) 11 Mar. 95/6: And we’ve got to forget we are stonkered, if but for a week or a day, / For there are duties we’ve all got to shoulder.
1952		Argus (Melbourne) 29 Aug. 10s/1: S’elp me! I never did such a hard day’s work in all my life [...] I was stonkered.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 108/1: stonkered exhausted, outwitted, defeated, drunk.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].