Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
a. 1 which has broken down and, as a result, is no longer in working order. 2 not properly maintained; neglected.
WordNet
adj. in deplorable condition; "a street of bedraggled tenements"; "a broken-down fence"; "a ramshackle old pier"; "a tumble-down shack" [syn: bedraggled, dilapidated, ramshackle, tatterdemalion, tumble-down, unsound]
not in working order; "had to push the broken-down car"; "a broken-down tractor fit only for children to play on"
Usage examples of "broken-down".
The hut was situated half way up the Alm, reckoning from Dorfli, and it was well that it was provided with some shelter, for it was so broken-down and dilapidated that even then it must have been very unsafe as a habitation, for when the stormy south wind came sweeping over the mountain, everything inside it, doors and windows, shook and rattled, and all the rotten old beams creaked and trembled.
Ignacio Bozal had suddenly appeared in Acapulco with a bankroll big enough to buy and renovate a broken-down resort hotel and open for business just before the birth of the Mexican Riviera.
All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks.
It was perfect, not because of the perfection of his ingredientsthese are easy to duplicate herebut because of his fifty-year-old broken-down Carpigiani gelato machine, which with its battered blade and erratic temperature produces the perfect granita texture: tiny, regular, moist, and highly flavored crystals of ice.
Its tiny flame made the horrible bare little room even more horrible, but by its light Alethea had seen something-candles in two broken-down enamel candlesticks.
Therefore complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of the small unlovely farmhouse, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine flavors and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue the same familiar sounds.
A few eyebrows had been raised two years ago when Winston and Shane had bought a broken-down old manor, Beck House, in nearby West Tanfield, remodeled it, and moved in together.
People are constantly plotting against Castro, and often the schemes end up on some broken-down boat, loaded with incriminating ammo.
She had intended to apologise and had been rehearsing a convincing lie about a broken-down train and vandalised phone boxes all the way back from the station.
Some old guy on the shtetl in Czarist Russia who owned two chickens and a broken-down horse was reading the hate rag of the antisemites—you know, the Jews are doing this, the Jews are doing that.
Some old guy on the shtetl in Czarist Russia who owned two chickens and a broken-down horse was reading the hate rag of the antisemites - you know, the Jews are doing this, the Jews are doing that.
On a broken-down Salvation Army table, the first piece of furniture she'd bought in California, she kept a piece of Wisconsin: a clump of birdsfoot violets, dug from the banks of the Whitewater River, and a flat of lilies-of-the-valley.
The nearest beacon to the broken-down Proxima Centauri Beacon was on one of the planets of Beta Circinus and I headed there first, a short trip of only about nine days in hyperspace.
Once he gets a drink, he needs to find his errant striker, although he suspects Vaos is in the barn, currying Meriwhen or the broken-down bay that Merga uses to go to market.
Once he gets a drink, he needs to find his errant striker, although he suspects Vaos is in the barn, currying Meriwhen or the broken-down bay thai Merga uses to go to market.