basket case

noun

plural basket cases

1

a

informal : a person who is functionally incapacitated from extreme nervousness, emotional distress, mental or physical overwork, etc.

I was so worried about losing my job that I was a complete basket case.

At 6 o'clock nearly every morning, Harvey Mackay hits the floor running. In a few minutes he's off on his seven-miler. "With all the traveling I do, if I didn't run I'd be a basket case," says the man whose dizzy day of activities usually doesn't wind up until one the next morning.

—Jim Braham

Needless to say, I was a basket case for the rest of the afternoon and evening, convinced that at any moment the man would reappear at my window.

—Stephanie Booth

b

informal : something (such as a business or government) that is dysfunctional, run-down, or close to failure

But the utility industry is a financial basket case. Once the bluest of blue chips, utility stocks and bonds have lost their luster.

—Chemical and Engineering News

Despite its perceived liabilities, Poland has made astounding progress in just two years. It was an economic basket case until the end of 1989, with hyperinflation, bare shelves and food lines.

—Blaine Harden

Any antique airplane that can be located is sold (even basket cases) at high premium to enthusiastic antiquers who fly them with pride.

—Francis Rourke

2

dated, informal + offensive : a person who has all four limbs amputated

Examples of basket case in a Sentence

I was so worried about losing my job that I was a complete basket case.

a business that was once very successful but is now a financial basket case

Recent Examples on the Web

When China was an economic basket case, 100 miles of ocean was more than enough deterrent. —Roger Wicker, WSJ, 4 May 2022

Communist China was a basket case under one-man rule. —Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 21 June 2022

Sri Lanka is an international basket case whose foreign reserves — which once stood at over $6 billion under the Rajapaksas — have dwindled to almost nothing. —New York Times, 29 May 2022

Naím was once, in a happier day, the finance minister of Venezuela, and Hugo Chávez, who took a troubled but essentially prosperous country with a long democratic tradition and turned it into an international basket case, comes in for close study. —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 16 May 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1919, in the meaning defined at sense 2