done for
adjEtymology Perhaps from a transposition of fordone (“destroyed, ruined”).
1
Doomed; without hope of recovery.
- He's done for when they hear that piece of testimony.
- I'd like to know what would become of us in the next ten minutes. They've got us in a vise. We're done for, Gall.c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1923, →OCLC, Act 3:
1 more example
- I think of Spengler and of his terrible pronunciamentos, and I wonder if style, style in the grand manner, is done for.1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 6:
2
See done, for: Punished because of.