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basket case
noun
- Offensive. a person who has had all four limbs amputated.
- a person who is helpless or incapable of functioning normally, especially due to overwhelming stress, anxiety, or the like.
- anything that is impaired or incapable of functioning:
Right after the war the conquered nation was considered an economic basket case.
basket case
noun
- a person who is suffering from extreme nervous strain; nervous wreck
- taboo.a person who has had both arms and both legs amputated
- someone or something that is incapable of functioning normally
- ( as modifier )
a basket-case economy
Sensitive Note
Word History and Origins
Origin of basket case1
Idioms and Phrases
A person or thing too impaired to function. For example, The stress of moving twice in one year left her a basket case , or The republics of the former Soviet Union are economic basket cases . Originating in World War I for a soldier who had lost all four limbs in combat and consequently had to be carried in a litter (“basket”), this term was then transferred to an emotionally or mentally unstable person and later to anything that failed to function. [ Slang ; second half of 1900s]Example Sentences
When Fujimori took office in 1990, Peru was Latin America’s basket case.
Our nation may not be a basket case on the verge of state failure—the impression you would get from listening to the apocalyptic rhetoric at a Trump rally—but it is still a country with many serious problems that demand innovative policy solutions.
For years, Scottish football used to look at managerial merry-go-rounds in English football and decry it as a basket case environment, Now, it’s every bit as volatile in this country, if not worse.
So when her voice catches talking about that moment in “Tuesday,” I flash back to a few recent lump-in-the-throat moments in her podcast, like the time she was a “basket case” interviewing Bonnie Raitt, describing her music as “holy.”
And Jeremy Jordan’s Gatsby is an adorably panicked basket case, second-guessing in charming comic song his plan to ambush Eva Noblezada’s Daisy with a reunion.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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