Learn English – Origin and status of “hosed”, meaning “broken”

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Are the etymology and status of hosed known, and if so, what are they? For this question, "hosed" is used as at onlineslangdictionary or at urbandictionary. (That is, with meaning broken, messed up, worn out, rather than its probably-older "put hose on" or "attached hose" past-participle meanings.)

My question about the status of the word is whether it indubitably is slang, vs. being a "proper dictionary word".
I've always supposed it should be the latter, and imagined that dictionary compilers have left it out by mistake.

Note 1: as a plus, the onlineslangdictionary site tabulates votes on frequency of use and sense of vulgarity of words, and tabulates hundreds of recent tweets containing 'hosed'; perhaps as a minus, it gives a needlessly wordy definition: "utterly and undoubtedly affixiated in a troublesome situation".

Note 2: ngrams.googlelabs.com shows frequency of use of 'hosed' tripling between 1930 and 1940.

Update 1: Among answers given so far, the "police brutality [by] use of water via fire hoses" and/or "being beaten with a rubber hose" explanations seem less compelling than (i) the explanation stemming from hose as "transparent metaphor for the penis" (supported by specialised slang dictionary references) or (ii) the explanation based on SCTV / Mackenzie Brothers / Great White North reference and Wikipedia hoser entry. If it becomes more clear in a few days I'll checkmark an answer. – jiw

Best Answer

Early on that word of course was used to talk about the action of cleaning something off with a garden hose, but that is not the meaning you are asking about. I do not recall ever hearing that term used with that meaning before the 80's. What happened in the 80's?

Well, SCTV had a very funny (to us USAsians) skit with a couple of stereotypical Canadians called the McKenzie Brothers. They were constantly calling each other "hosers", and talking about how they had "hosed" each other. The skit went the 80's equivalent of viral, with an album (with a couple of singles that got good airplay) and a movie spun off it. The effect was that we (in the USA) got "hoser" added to the language as sort of a good-natured insult, or a way to make fun of Canadian speech.

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Along with it, we borrowed the verb and adverb forms of "hosed" from the same source. Its a much more useful word, so it kinda lost its association with Canadians, and got fully adopted into the USA lexicon.

So where did Canadians come up with these words? That's where personal experience fails me, so I have to rely on online sources:

Like the very similar term hosehead, the term may have referred to farmers of the Canadian prairies, who would siphon gas from farming vehicles with a hose during the Great Depression of the 1930s.[citation needed] The expression has since been converted to the verb 'to hose' as in to trick, deceive, or steal - for example: "That card-shark sure hosed me." Hosed has an additional meaning of becoming drunk - for example: "Let's go out and get hosed." Another possible origin is derived from hockey slang. Before ice resurfacers, the losing team in a hockey game would have to hose down the rink after a game. Thus the term "hoser" being synonymous with "loser".

Personally I prefer the hockey explanation, but that doesn't make it right.

Currently the OED says there is no clear evidence of the term being used prior to its use by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, which to my mind leaves a strong possibility that they may have invented the slang themselves (although they are both Canadian, so they could well just be the first to record an existing slang).