| basket case | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a person who is suffering from extreme nervous strain; nervous wreck |
| 2. | taboo chiefly (US), (Canadian) a person who has had both arms and both legs amputated |
| 3. | a. someone or something that is incapable of functioning normally |
| b. (as modifier): a basket-case economy | |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| a chattering or flighty, light-headed person. |
basket case definition
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basket case
A person or thing too impaired to function. For example, The stress of moving twice in one year left her a basket case, or The republics of the former Soviet Union are economic basket cases. Originating in World War I for a soldier who had lost all four limbs in combat and consequently had to be carried in a litter ("basket"), this term was then transferred to an emotionally or mentally unstable person and later to anything that failed to function. [Slang; second half of 1900s]