2023年5月20日 · It doesn't help that the approved answer to the other question only gives a partial account of the origin of "knock it off", which may be partly connected to auctioneers but probably relates to the earlier idiom "knock off" meaning "do quickly, finish quickly" which the OED has at 1817, or the (originally 17th century) sense "to leave off one's work" (still used in the UK …

2015年10月7日 · One major factor in popularizing the positive meaning of "knock your socks off" was an ad campaign done by Pepsi-Cola in the mid-1960s to promote Mountain Dew, a regional Southern soft drink purchased by Pepsi-Cola that Pepsi hoped to make popular on a national basis. Mountain Dew originally got its name for a Southern slang term for moonshine ...

2013年1月4日 · Knock off has numerous meanings, so it’s unlikely that there is one explanation for them all. The OED’s earliest citation in the sense ‘to dispatch, dispose of, put out of hand, accomplish; to complete or do hastily’ is dated 1817, but it has been used to mean ‘To cause to desist or leave off from work’ since 1651.

2013年3月28日 · Knock it off: Stop what you are doing - stop irritating me with your words/behaviour. Drop it: Never mind, forget about it, stop this conversation before it escalates. They could be used interchangeably in a heated discussion, but to me the first one is more agressive and behaviour oriented than the second which is to my mind only conversation ...

2013年6月6日 · Here is the definition of off color in Chapman & Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, Third Edition (1995): off color adj phr by 1875 Somewhat salacious; risqué; =BLUE: a couple of off-color jokes/ Some of his observations were a bit off color.

2020年7月23日 · This, it seems, is equivalent to throwing the glove in days of yore, or to the boyish custom of knocking a chip off the shoulder." In 1830 the New York newspaper The Long Island Telegraph printed this: "When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his ...

A "knock-off" situation, whether it's a copy or a new or different branding of the same "blanks", has to involve one brand that's more successful than the other, with the latter trying to "cash in" by looking like the big name brand.

2015年8月24日 · To strike off by or as by a blow; also fig. to knock off a person's head , to ‘beat’ or surpass him. 1862 Cornhill Mag. June 655, I could knock his head off in Greek Iambics. To cause to desist or leave off from work; to discharge or dismiss from employment, to ‘lay off’.

2015年10月28日 · Here's the text: A: Nobody's fed me all day and I'm still part of this family. B: There's a sandwich in the fridge. Knock yourself out! What does it mean by knock yourself out?

2014年11月28日 · The AmE expression knock on wood and the BrE version touch wood ( which predates the American one) are two common 'superstitious' sayings: knock on wood is used by people who rap their knuckles on a piece of wood hoping to stave off bad luck. In the UK, the phrase 'touch wood' is used - often jokingly by tapping one's head. The phrases are ...