Meanings
- not comparableDoomed; without hope of recovery.
He's done for when they hear that piece of testimony.
2 more examples
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 3I 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
- participlepastpast participle of do for
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivedoomed to extinction
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Perhaps from a transposition of fordone (“destroyed, ruined”).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Catalan haver begut oli
- haver begut oliwithout hope
Chinese Mandarin 沒救了 /没救了, 完蛋
- 沒救了 /没救了without hope
- 完蛋 (wándàn)without hope
German geliefert
- geliefertwithout hope
Italian spacciato
- spacciatowithout hope
Polish skończony
- skończonywithout hope
Cite this entry
done for. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/done%20for
“done for.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/done%20for. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “done for,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/done%20for.
Source: done for on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.