kippered

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of kipper

comparative more kippered · superlative most kippered

1. Stiff and lacking vitality; stale.

   Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies, They babble over chestnuts and their punch And stale round-table jests of years ago.

   2019, Robert Baldwin Ross, Masques & Phases

   4 more examples

   Our writers of history have been aroused from “ their somnolent antiquarian busy-work on kippered events and are feeling the force of living ones and learning what it means to get in the study of the present inspiration and interest for assimilating a knowledge of the past.

   1927, Ralph W. Pringle, Methods with Adolescents, page 253

   At first I thought perhaps my students were writing this kind of kippered prose because they were attempting scenes and subjects that they knew nothing about.

   1963, William Henry Hills, Robert Luce, The Writer - Volume 76

   and he caused offence by banging the drums and beating the cymbals at a dance in Lucknow, and sitting at table beside pretty ingénues rather than kippered memsahibs of suitable seniority.

   2016, Piers Brendon, Edward VIII

   She was, at heart, as dry, as kippered, as intentionalist, and coldly selfconscious as the driest of Egyptian book-keepers in a great merchant firm at Corinth.

   2019, Emil Reich, Nights with the Gods

2. Worn out; tired.

   He was done for, you know . . . quite kippered . . . The General's words dinned in his brain.

   2015, Leon Garfield, The Drummer Boy, page 85

   1 more example

   Cigar clenched between his knuckles, Johnnie Whiteside patted Gordon's knee. 'How d'you feel, old spud?' 'Slightly kippered,' Gordon answered. 'Not too kippered?' said Eric.

   2012, Jessica Stirling, The Asking Price