napoo

Finished, dead, no more, gone; non-existent.

Adjective

  1. Finished, dead, no more, gone; non-existent.
    • What shall I do? / My poor old dug-out is napoo. - 1918 April, 'R', An elegy on my dugout, when it was done in, published in Four Whistles by D Company of the Scottish Officer Cadet Battalion, quoted in Graham Seal, The...
    • “[…] It seems scrounging for fuel ’ad reached such a pitch in the village […] But our washing ’ad to be done, ’an I thought if I got the whole of this football team scrounging they might find something as everyone else...
    • One afternoon the corps was due to shift, so that morning the cook said to the Turco, giving him his farewell tin: 'Oh la, la, Johnny, napoo pozzy tomorrow.' - 1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XVII, in Good-bye to...
  2. Dead.
    • ‘Hey, Bill, where′s Charles?’ / ‘Napoo.’ / ‘What?’ / ‘Yes. He was out on a listening post and lit a cigarette. Sniper got him.’ - 1918, Hereward Carrington, Psychical Phenomena and the War, page 69:

Origin

World War I British and ANZAC army slang, probably a corruption of French “il n′y a plus” (“there is no more”).

Interjection

  1. There is no more.
    • “[…]Finish! Napoo!” and he spread his hands expressively, holding the cup upside down with the cloth hanging out of it, before he went on: “But it hasn't come to that yet.[…]” - 1939, Ruthven Todd, Over the Mountain,...

Forms

narpoo

Verb

  1. To finish; to put an end to; to kill.
    • He will napoo the rations.
    • “The general says that if you are wise you will leave before the cannons come. Otherwise you′ll get ‘napooed,’ ” and he made an expressive gesture. “Compris?” - 1918, Roland Pertwee, The Little Landscape: Everybody′s...
    • I thought a man was lucky if he did not get napooed first trip in. - 1918, Hereward Carrington, Psychical Phenomena and the War, page 68:

Forms

napoos napooing napooed