Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: All in

 I'm baaaack from the Malice Domestic mystery convention and, whew, I have to say I am all in, as in "tired, exhausted" (Merriam-Webster, Entry 2 of 2, Definition 1). All in also means "fully committed or involved in something," which I get. But how/when did it come to mean just. plain. beat...?

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I'm not the only one wondering, and The Grammarist addresses this very question, saying:

According to [Eric] Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the term “all in” is a colloquial expression that originated on the floors of stock exchanges in the mid-19th century. If the market was “all in,” it was down or depressed; if it was “all out,” it was rising or inflated. By extension, the term “all in” was borrowed in the early 20th century to mean “exhausted” or “used up” in reference to people or animals who were verging on collapse.

Okay, that origin story makes sense to me. However, The Grammarist then says (essentially) "not so fast": 

... The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a somewhat different explanation: “all in” originated at the card table. If you were “all in,” you were broke (that is, out of money), because you had already put all of your money in the pot. So you couldn’t play anymore.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer says this expression for exhaustion appeared in the last half of the 19th century, with the gambling reference first recorded in  1907.

The New Yorker did a deep dive into all in and its relation to politics in the 2015 article Going All In on "All In," noting:

In American usage, the phrase “all in” began as a colloquial expression meaning to be in a bad spot—exhausted, worn out, and spent. In the game of poker, it refers to the moment when a player—whether out of bravado, recklessness, or desperation—bets all of his or her chips on a single hand... Whereas “all in” once referred to a scenario in which someone either wins a hand or loses everything in a flash, now it means that a person is simply generally enthusiastic or fully committed. It’s everywhere these days—business jargon, marketing catch phrases, sports mantras, and the idioms of religion and self-help. The all-in moment in poker is a thrilling win-or-lose-everything crisis of dramatic clarity: you’ve wagered all you’ve got, giving your fate over to the cards, and you can’t go back out again. Going all in is often a spectacularly bad idea. But in life, it seems, it is all good—the only way to live boldly is to be all in on many different things at once. ... 

Whereas “all in” once referred to a scenario in which someone either wins a hand or loses everything in a flash, now it means that a person is simply generally enthusiastic or fully committed. It’s everywhere these days—business jargon, marketing catch phrases, sports mantras, and the idioms of religion and self-help.

The all-in moment in poker is a thrilling win-or-lose-everything crisis of dramatic clarity: you’ve wagered all you’ve got, giving your fate over to the cards, and you can’t go back out again. Going all in is often a spectacularly bad idea. But in life, it seems, it is all good—the only way to live boldly is to be all in on many different things at once.

And with that... I'm definitely all in. 

Naptime!
Repose by John White Alexander, 1895