knocked up

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Adjective

knocked up (not comparable)

1. (slang, principally American, sometimes offensive) Pregnant, typically outside of marriage.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:pregnant

   • 2000, Gina Wendkos, Coyote Ugly (motion picture), spoken by Wendy (Ellen Cleghorne):

     My name is Wendy and I first moved to New York when I was 21 to be a dancer, but I broke my big toe and then I got knocked up by this actor who dumped me to join the Peace Corps, so for the last 16 years I been raising my daughter all by myself and then two weeks ago, she tells me that she is a bisexual and that she hates me more than any person on this planet.

   • 2011, Anna Young, I Hate Myself and Want to Die, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 179:

     I ask him why she doesn't get on methadone while she's knocked up. He says because she not only uses heroin but she's a crystal meth head and a crack head to boot. She got knocked up by a John she picked up one night hooking.

2. (slang, archaic) Exhausted; worn out or used up.
   • 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:

     I walked about the streets where the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an unquiet spirit, I fagged through the Park again and again, long after I was quite knocked up.

Translations

pregnant

• French: en cloque (fr)
• Portuguese: prenha (pt) f
• Swedish: på smällen (sv)

References

• (exhausted): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary

Verb

knocked up

1. simple past and past participle of knock up