Definition of "knock out"

knock out

verb
third-person singular simple present knocks out, present participle knocking out, simple past and past participle knocked out
1. (transitive) To strike or bump (someone or something) out.
2. (transitive, idiomatic) To render unconscious, as by a blow to the head.
  Quotations
  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.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
3. (transitive, informal, idiomatic) To put to sleep.
4. (intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To fall asleep, especially suddenly.
  Quotations
  That's a put-you-straight-to-sleep book if there ever was one, and I knocked right out after two paragraphs.
  2014, D. G. Driver, Cry of the Sea, page 61
5. (transitive, informal, idiomatic) To exhaust.
6. (transitive, informal) To complete, especially in haste; knock off.
7. (transitive, idiomatic) To cause a mechanism to become non-functional by damaging or destroying it.
8. (transitive) To eliminate from a contest or similar.
  Quotations
  As they were approaching bankruptcy from being knocked out of the calculator market, they began development on the first commercially available microcomputer, the Altair.
  1980, InfoWorld, volume 2, number 20
  Tottenham were knocked out of the Europa League, despite a comfortable victory over Shamrock Rovers in Dublin.
  2011 December 15, Marc Higginson, “Shamrock Rovers 0-4 Tottenham”, in BBC Sport
9. (transitive) To communicate (a message) by knocking.
10. To lose the scent of hounds in fox-hunting.
11. (obsolete, Oxford University slang) To leave college after hours—after half-past ten at night when the doors have been locked.
  Quotations
  "Hullo!" he said, getting up; "time for me to knock out, or old Copas will be in bed. […] "
  1861, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1883, page 503

Definition of "knock out"

knock out

verb

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