etymologyphrasal-verbs
I was wondering how "done for" came to existence.
The google search ' "done for" etymology ' didn't give any meaningful results, or maybe I need to dig deeper.
How did "for" appear at the end? Is it the short version of "done for good", or is it something else?
The phrase, with variants, predates Batman: The Animated Series (1992 to 1995).
The earliest result in Google Books is a snippet of Me, Minsky & Max by Bruce Pollock (Page 221, 1978):
This whole dumb trip might have been for nothing! Zero, zilch, zip, nada, nothing. I wondered how I'd recognize him. Would he give off some kind of winning quintessential Stillman gleam, or would he come laden with the aroma of a loser?
The earliest full view result is from InfoWorld magazine (7 Feb 1983 - Page 20, Vol. 5, No. 6):
You've obtained your first home computer, taklen it fresh out of the box, set it up on the computer stand and plugged it in. Nothing happens. You click a few switches, tinker with the keys and try again. Zilch, nada, nil; zero response. The box is declared dead on arrival.
As FumbleFingers commented, National Lampoon (Page 311 - 1974 - Snippet view) has an earlier variant without nada:
Sooner or later the whole damn world's going to know, anyway. The NatLamp's washed up. That's right. We're finished. Fresh out of ideas. Empty. Barren. Bumed out. And there's nothing left. Zip. Zilch. Zero. The square root of sweet fuck all.
The repetition is for emphasis and to make a point, and they have a jocular effect which is reminiscent of Monty Python's dead parrot sketch from 1969:
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
I also joked this is similar to Roget's Thesaurus so here's an entry from an 1879 edition:
There may be a psychoacoustic reason for why notes of a high frequency are called high and notes of a low frequency are called low.
First, perception. When high-frequency notes are sounded (from, say, a piccolo or a violin), the notes will resonate in the smaller cavities in your body (such as your head).
When low-frequency notes are sounded (say, from a double bass), the notes will resonate in the larger cavities in your body (such as your chest). So the higher and lower pitches are felt not just in the ears, but in the higher and lower parts of your body. This perception may have given rise to the terms.
Second, production. In the vocal production of music, singers will shift between head voice and chest voice. Head voice is used for, you guessed it, higher notes. (Think the Bee Gees if you have a leisure suit in the back of your closet. Or your favorite coloratura soprano if you saw Lucia di Lammamore or The Magic Flute recently.) Chest voice, produced lower in the body, produces lower notes.
Third, there may also be historical reasons, dating back well before oscilloscopes. Research into musical pitches extends at least back to Pythagoras (sixth century BC).
The word gamut come from Medieval Latin, with the root coming from gamma ut, where gamma referred to the bass G and ut referred to the first note in the lowest of the hexachords. (See Etymology online.) As the lowest note, it also has the lowest number (1).
Today, the middle A is called A4 (440Hz for many orchestras). It’s about the middle of the standard 88-key piano keyboard. The A to the left of it (an octave below) is called A3 and has half the frequency (220 Hz).
Could the numbers assigned to octaves from Pythagoras (sixth century BC) and adopted by Guido d’Arrezzo (sixteenth century) have naturally conferred the sense of low to a note? A gamut or G1 is lower in pitch than a G2, corresponding to its lower notation (a 1 versus a 2).
I don’t have enough breadth to know if high and low pitches work in language systems other than those derived from Proto-Indo-European. I seem to recall from Women Fire and Dangerous things that the word anger is widely associated with heat, in part because of the physiological response when one is angered, namely, that the body temperature actually rises. Lakoff’s book may give you some more insight into other linguistic universals.
Best Answer
Etymonline is a good resource for etymologies. They don't have all idioms, but they do have quite a few of the most common:
If you want the fuller story, though, check out the OED if you have access:
The first citation I think is the key here. "Done for" in Middle English could be written "fordone." The prefix "for-" has ruinous connotations:
So "done for" means "brought to the point of ruin." You can compare this to "finished," which often means "ruined," as in "He got the money? Oh, no, I'm finished!"
Interestingly, there might be a connection with a secondary meaning of "done" meaning "arrested" or "convicted."
From the OED: