I heard an expression on a US TV programme the other day:

“The boiler is on the fritz” is what it sounded like and I think I’ve heard it before. Does it mean: ‘it has become unreliable’, or: ‘it no longer works at all’ and does anyone know its origin?

In Britspeak we might say ‘it’s on the blink’ for unreliability (that sounds rather dated actually) or ‘it’s totally knackered’ for not working at all (or more crudely: ‘it’s buggered’).

Can our French speakers come up with French equivalents? I know: ‘il ne marche pas’, but is there something more - expressive? I pick French, because although I can get from A to B and feed myself on the way in one or two other languages, I can do a bit more than that in French.