done for

Perhaps from a transposition of fordone (“destroyed, ruined”).

done for (not comparable)

1. Doomed; without hope of recovery.

   He's done for when they hear that piece of testimony.

   • 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 3:

     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.

   • 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 6:

     I think of Spengler and of his terrible pronunciamentos, and I wonder if style, style in the grand manner, is done for.

• do for
• fordo

done for

1. past participle of do for

• fordone