Worn-out means used until it is useless — or, of a person, completely exhausted.
The object sense is about wear rather than breakage, so worn-out shoes have thinned rather than split, and a worn-out excuse has been used too often to work. The person sense is very common and means beyond tired. It goes before a noun with a hyphen and follows a verb without one. Its neighbours are threadbare for fabric and shattered for people, which is the strongest British word available.
From worn + out.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 31 of A Man Called Ove.
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