downer

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdaʊnə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈdaʊnɚ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊnə(ɹ)

down +‎ -er

downer (plural downers)

1. (slang) A negative drug trip.

   Normally those pills give me a boost, but last night they gave me a downer.

2. (slang) A drug that has depressant qualities.
3. (slang) Something or someone disagreeable, dispiriting or depressing; a killjoy.
   • 2009, Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are:

     You don't really need to know me. I'm kind of a downer.

   • 2010, Nicole LaPorte, The Men Who Would Be King:

     Geffen had never understood why such a downer of a film was being released over the holidays.

4. A livestock animal that has collapsed.
   • 1964, John Hendrix, If I Can Do It Horseback: A Cow-Country Sketchbook, page 40:

     The ten-dollar bill was for eating money and the prod pole to be used when the train stopped for water in getting "downers" back on their feet.

   • 2009, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, Hallmark/Westland Meat Recall:

     In 1993, Farm Sanctuary produced undercover footage of downers being lifted by forklift at Hallmark, prompting introduction of a California downer cattle law the next year. Either management provided instructions to get the downers moving or was asleep at the wheel and let employees run wild — in either case, it's an indictment of management.

   • 2009, Meat & Poultry - Volume 55, Issues 7-12, page lxxii:

     The two plants where I saw great reductions in downers have reduced, but not eliminated Paylean use.

5. A form of industrial action in which workers down tools and refuse to work.
   • 1978, C. T. B. Smith, Great Britain. Dept. of Employment, Manpower Papers (issue 15, page 158)

     In the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, a strike may be a downer or a stoppage as defined by the Department.

   • 1985, Alex Callinicos, Mike Simons, The Great Strike: The Miners' Strike of 1984-5 and Its Lessons:

     Cowley experienced a rash of 'downers' — short, sharp, unofficial strikes.

• (something or someone disagreeable): buzzkill, killjoy, spoilsport; see also Thesaurus:spoilsport

• German: Downer

Perhaps related to tanner (“sixpence”).

downer (plural downers)

1. (UK, slang, obsolete) A sixpence.
   • 1859, Snowden's magistrates assistant, page 90:

     The price of a case (five shillings piece bad) from the smasher is about one shilling; an alderman (two and sixpence) about sixpence; a peg (shilling) about threepence; a downer or sprat (sixpence) about twopence.

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

• Nedrow, Rowden, Wonder, Worden, red won, wonder, wondre

downer

1. inflection of down:
   1. strong/mixed nominative masculine singular
   2. strong genitive/dative feminine singular
   3. strong genitive plural