knock out

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See also: knockout, Knockout, knock-out, and Knock-out

English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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knock out (third-person singular simple present knocks out, present participle knocking out, simple past and past participle knocked out)

  1. To strike or render unconscious
    1. (transitive) To strike or bump (someone or something) out.
      I accidentally knocked out the glass in my picture frame.
    2. (transitive, idiomatic) To render unconscious, as by a blow to the head.
      The boxer knocked out his opponent in the third round.
      • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
        In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.
    3. (transitive, informal, idiomatic) To put to sleep.
      The allergy pill knocked him out for a good three hours.
    4. (intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To fall asleep, especially suddenly.
      • 2014, D. G. Driver, Cry of the Sea, page 61:
        That's a put-you-straight-to-sleep book if there ever was one, and I knocked right out after two paragraphs.
    5. (transitive, informal, idiomatic) To exhaust.
      Running errands all day really knocked him out.
    6. (transitive, informal, idiomatic) To impress, surpass or overwhelm (someone).
    7. (transitive, slang) To defeat or kill (someone).
    8. (transitive, idiomatic) To cause a mechanism to become non-functional by damaging or destroying it.
      The antitank gun knocked out the enemy tank.
    9. (transitive) To eliminate from a contest or similar.
      • 1980, InfoWorld, volume 2, number 20:
        As they were approaching bankruptcy from being knocked out of the calculator market, they began development on the first commercially available microcomputer, the Altair.
      • 2011 December 15, Marc Higginson, “Shamrock Rovers 0-4 Tottenham”, in BBC Sport:
        Tottenham were knocked out of the Europa League, despite a comfortable victory over Shamrock Rovers in Dublin.
  2. (transitive) To communicate (a message) by knocking.
    The prisoner knocked out a message on the wall for the prisoner in the adjoining cell.
  3. (transitive, informal) To complete, especially in haste; knock off.
    They knocked out the entire project in one night.
  4. To lose the scent of hounds in fox-hunting.
  5. (obsolete, Oxford University slang) To leave college after hours—after half-past ten at night when the doors have been locked.
  6. (transitive, Australia) To obtain or earn (something, often money or food).
  7. (transitive, slang, UK) To sell.

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • → Macedonian: нокаут (nokaut)
  • → Portuguese: nocaute
  • → Russian: нокаут (nokaut)
  • → Serbo-Croatian: нокаут
  • → Spanish: nocaut
  • → Turkish: nakavt

Translations

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See also

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