do for
verb1
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see do, for.
- What can I do for you?
2
UK To doom; to bring about the demise of someone; to injure or harm someone.
- Smoking did for him in the end.
- She's done for!
2 more examples
- "He's a cheery old card," muttered Harry to Jack / As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. / * * * * * / But he did for them both by his plan of attack.1918, Siegfried Sassoon, “The General”, in Counter-Attack and Other Poems:
- —That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.1922 February, James Joyce, “[16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 604:
3
UK To prosecute someone for a criminal offence.
- He was done for murder.
- The police did him for conspiracy to commit burglary.
- I've left my key in my office in Manchester, my family are at Bournemouth, and the old woman who does for me goes home at nine o'clock.1915, Frank Thomas Bullen, Recollections:
5
Slang To tire; to exhaust.
- All this running has done for me.
- Related terms
- done for