Words & TermsEveryday life
bung
Incapacitated, exhausted, broken or ruined; in go bung, to fail, collapse, die or become bankrupt, according to context.
In a sentence
The old pump is bung again, so we’ll need the spare.
Where it came from
Bung comes through nineteenth-century Australian pidgin from bang, meaning dead in Yagara, the language of the Brisbane region. Its later figurative senses include broken, exhausted, failed and bankrupt.
- First recorded
- 1885
- Initial era
- 1850–1899
- Where used
- Australia-wide