Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Incapacitated or destroyed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective slang Out of order; not working; broken.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective destroyed or killed

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[German kaputt, from French capot, not having won a single trick at piquet, perhaps from French dialectal caper, to look at on the sly, knit the brows, from French cape, cape (as in sous cape, on the sly, secretly (literally, under the cape)), from Provençal capa, from Late Latin cappa.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From German kaputt, though more often rendered kaput in English; via Yiddish קאַפּוט (kaput, "lost, dead"). The same word has also been borrowed by many other languages, with approximately the same meaning.

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Examples

  • Thrfeed also claims Lipstick Jungle is officially kaput, which is news to us, but

    Jossip 2009

  • We should reject Julius Pokorny's Indo-European root *kaput which is poorly justified both phonetically and distributionally.

    Pondering on the phrase 'capite velato' 2010

  • We should reject Julius Pokorny's Indo-European root *kaput which is poorly justified both phonetically and distributionally.

    Archive 2010-09-01 2010

  • R W Posner's article, noted at Buzz Flash and posted at politicalcortex, elicits emotions of 'kaput' and 'ersatz' experienced between 1st & 2nd WWs.

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: INDOCTRI-NATION: FAIT ACCOMPLI 2008

  • VIEW FAVORITES yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = 'INDOCTRI-NATION: FAIT ACCOMPLI'; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = 'R W Posner\'s article, noted at Buzz Flash and posted at politicalcortex, elicits emotions of "kaput" and "ersatz" experienced between 1st & 2nd WWs.

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: INDOCTRI-NATION: FAIT ACCOMPLI 2008

  • LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa denied Thursday a recent report on a local blog that said his marriage to Corina Villaraigosa was "kaput" and that he and his wife had separated...

    Gavin Just Can't Stay Out of Trouble 2007

  • The only lesson here is that Kaizen only goes "kaput" when you take the focus away from trying to improve the system.

    Gemba Panta Rei 2010

  • The actress was slammed on a celebrity site as having a career that's gone "kaput" and as having "stooped pretty low" to take on her April 11-debuting Lifetime film, "Tribute."

    unknown title 2009

  • Well, he didn't say "kaput" but the answer was just as bad.

    Joshing Politics 2009

  • "kaput" Monday afternoon when I started trying to update the video drivers.

    unknown title 2009

Comments

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  • Surprised to be the first one to add this word.

    I imagine this word as the result of exasperated spitting...as when one's car is dead and the owner bursts into a fit of kicking and spitting.

    January 12, 2007

  • Ah, I see, it's also spelled kaputt

    January 12, 2007

  • They should have kept the German spelling when porting it to English.

    November 8, 2011