What is the origin of the expression "I'm broke"?

When people have no money with them they usually use the expression "I'm broke"

Does anyone know how this originated?

Solution 1:

Broke is an old form, and nowadays informal, use of broken. If we look in the OED we can see that one of the meanings of break is:

11a. To ruin financially, make bankrupt (a person or bank).

[First recorded in the 17th century.]

11b. To become bankrupt, to ‘fail’ (commercially).

[First recorded in Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice Act III, sc.1).]

he cannot choose but break.

The definition of broken with the meaning of having no money in the OED is:

Reduced or shattered in worldly estate, financially ruined; having failed in business, bankrupt.

[First occurrence of broken in this sense is recorded in 1593.]

(Shakes. Rich. II, ii. i. 257 The Kings growne bankrupt like a broken man.)

The first occurrence of broke is recorded in 1665:

(Pepys Diary 6 July (1895) V. 6 It seems some of his creditors have taken notice of it, and he was like to be broke yesterday in his absence.)

Solution 2:

I suggest you check the expression here and you will get the following result:

past tense and obsolete pp. of break (variant of broken); extension to "insolvent" is first recorded 1716 (broken, in this sense, is attested from 1590s). By coincidence, O.E. cognate broc meant, in addition to "that which breaks," "affliction, misery;" but that sense died out long before the current one began.