Banjaxed

Etymology

Origin uncertain. Recorded as Dublin slang in the early twentieth century, with the verb 'banjax' attested in print from 1922 (Darrell Figgis and Seán O'Casey, both Dublin writers, in the same year). Green's Dictionary of Slang suggests it may be a euphemism for a vulgar term but does not commit. The word travelled out of Dublin into general Hiberno-English and from there into informal British English.

In a sentence

I'm tellin' you the scholar, Bentham, made a banjax o' th' Will. - Seán O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock, 1922

the pulp of his banjaxed corpse - Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939

If you were in the countryside you'd be banjaxed. You can't plug it into a ditch. - Rory Carroll, The Guardian, 2022

Historical notes

Banjax / banjaxed has the rare distinction of being a Dublin slang word that crossed the Irish Sea and stayed there: it is now standard informal British English, used by the Guardian and the London Review of Books without any flag of Irishness. The origin remains unsettled, which is itself unusual for a word with such heavy literary attestation in its first decade.