Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang A depressant or sedative drug, such as a barbiturate or tranquilizer.
- n. Slang One that depresses, such as an experience or person.
Wiktionary
- n. A negative drug trip.
- n. A drug that has depressant qualities.
- n. Something or someone disagreeable, dispiriting or depressing; a killjoy
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. colloq. a drug that reduces excitability and calms a person.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a drug that reduces excitability and calms a person
Examples
“And they identified it because the cow was what they call a downer cow.”
“Because this is an older beef cow, and it was what they call a downer cow, meaning it couldn't walk and meat from downer cows is not used in the human food supply.”
“And it is our standard operating procedure that what they call downer animals will be tested if they come to the slaughter facility as a downer animal.”
“There are other problems with pacing (that whole loony inflatable life raft scene), but "Willie" is the main downer for the whole movie.”
Ken's Nostalgic Indiana Jones Adventure - Part 2! « FirstShowing.net
“To label [Béla] Tarr, co-subject of this week's micro-retro at the Harvard Film Archive, as a downer is merely a philistine's impatient way of saying he's an existentialist, a modern-film Dostoyevsky-Beckett with a distinctly Hungarian taste for suicidal depression, morose self-amusement, and bile," writes Michael Atkinson.”
“The only downer is that they appear to be on the nights Ted seems to most often (though not really predictably) have off.”
“The downer is that you need to be a goofy Hyperspace member to check it out online otherwise scroll down the page past all the nerdy posts to see US airtimes.”
“You’ve got to find a way to signal to the reader that this self-loathing, nihilistic downer is nevertheless a human worth caring about.”
Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » INTERVIEW: Donald Maass, Part 2
“Industry calls the downer cow video an anomaly though that doesn't explain the all too regular recalls across the factory food industry, does it?”
Former FDA official: "We are fortunate more hasn't gone wrong"
“It alters current rules that allow so-called downer cows with treatable conditions to receive veterinary care and then be slaughtered for meat.”
The Huffington Post: Slaughterhouses Must Euthanize Downer Cows, USDA Says
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘downer’.
-
Cattle
cattle, cow, beef, steer, heifer, calf, bull, cattle call, Black Angus, Hereford, Holstein, Dwarf Lulu and 402 more...
-
EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
-
no. 2
lethargic, draining, bane of one's life, hectic, mission, downer, annoying, a pain in the pro..., proverbial, stressful, not ideal, debilitating and 20 more...
-
people (bad)
nouns for bad people / words that describe bad people.
goto the good people list
( people, character, descriptor, noun )culprit, perpetrator, tormentor, swindler, bamboozler, nincompoop, thief, liar, back stabber, vandal, burglar, cheater and 85 more...
-
Place Names Of Distinction
These are all names of real places. The focus is on towns, mountains, rivers etc. but I will consider streets. Streets are even wackier so if there's enough good'uns ... yep, another list :-)
malino, yoshkar-ola, cae onan, krakatoa, gulfoss, perusia, camooweal, manangatang, utopia, bastardo, condom, zumstein and 324 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for downer.

bilby "'Why don't you have a system that uncovers this inhumane treatment of animals?' Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) asked USDA officials during congressional hearings after the Westland/Hallmark scandal. And when Ken Peterson, assistant administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service told the press that the cows they saw were probably being moved 'out of the slaughter chain' and not into the slaughter chain, or that they had had accidents, Miriam Falco of CNN Medical News was skeptical. 'You’re saying that those downers never would have passed inspection anyway. But we see video of them going into the facility. So at what point does your inspection pick up on this?' she asked."
- Martha Rosenberg, We're Eating WHAT? McDonald's-Linked Slaughterhouse Shut Down, alternet.org, 23 August 2012. Aug 25, 2012
bilby A town in Clay County, Minnesota, USA. If you're having a bad week, perhaps this is not the place for your weekend getaway. Jan 4, 2008