Speaker 1: Knock knock, who's there? That's an old style joke in English,
the knock knock joke. Well, instead of making a joke today,
let's take a look at phrasal, verbs and idioms that
use the verb knock.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
This is Happy English Podcast Episode eight oh two, Knock knock.
Did you know that you can knock back, knock down,
knock around, and knock up. You can even knock someone
out or tell someone to knock it off. For today's
English lesson podcast, you're going to build your vocabulary and
sound more natural using knock. Let's get the ball rolling.
The verb knock in English basically means to hit or
strike something. When you want to enter a house or
a room, you can knock on the door. That's where
those corny old knock knock jokes got their start. You
can also knock into another person. You know, when you're
walking down the street and someone is paying more attention
to their phone than where they are walking, they're probably
gonna knock into someone. This basic meaning of knock brings
us right into our first phrasal verb of the left
less knock out or more specifically, knock someone out. In fact,
knock someone out has two meanings and uses. The first
one comes from boxing, you know, the sport where two
people enter the boxing ring and punch each other until
one of them can't get up anymore. Whenever that happens,
we can say that the champion knocked out his opponent.
Legendary boxer Mike Tyson knocked out his rival Marvis Frasier
in just thirty seconds back in nineteen eighty six. He
knocked him out. But it doesn't take a violent sport
or a champion fighter to knock someone out. You can
say that physical activity, a difficult exam, or even medicine
can knock you out. It could make you end up unconscious,
like I caught a cold this week and the cough
medicine from the doctor totally knocked me out, Or something
can make you totally exhausted. One of my students took
the TOIC exam a few weeks ago, and she said
that experience knocked her out. She was exhausted for the
rest of the day she was knocked out. And speaking
of hitting something, when you knock something down, like a
building or some other structure, you demolish it. Like they
knocked down an old house on my block and built
a new house on the same land. The city decided
to knock down an old railroad bridge and turned that
area into a park. And you know what eventually happens
to those old bookcases from Ikea. You knock them down
and put the whole thing in the trash. So when
something knocks you out, you kind of stop what you
were doing, right, And when something gets knocked down, it
stops being used with this kind of image. If someone
is doing something that bothers you, why not just tell
them to knock it off. Knock it off is a
set phrase that means stop doing that, and it's a
pretty direct way to tell someone to stop doing something,
Like if your kids are arguing about something while you're
trying to listen to this podcast, just tell them a
knock it off. Or if a coworker is watching YouTube
instead of working, you can tell her, yo, why don't
you you knock it off and get back to work.
Knock has some more idiomatic uses, too, like you can
knock around a place, which means to move around that
place without any particular purpose. Like when we were teenagers,
we used to spend hours knocking around the mall. One
of my friends got himself a backpack and decided to
knock around Southeast Asia last summer. Sounds relaxing, doesn't it,
which brings us to another casual phrasal verb, knock back.
We use knock back to talk about drinking something quickly
and entirely. At the party last weekend, Paul knocked back
a few beers with his buddies. You could even say
that you knocked back a few glasses of iced tea
on a hot day, but to be perfectly honest, we
tend to use knock back when we talk about drinking alcohol.
And finally, we have knock off, which is a pretty
versatile phrasal verb. Knock off means to stop working for
the day. I usually knock off around eight pm. At
the factory, they start work early and knock off at
four o'clock. Also related to work, you can knock off
a task, which means to finish that task. I knocked
off three podcasts this afternoon. Jack knocked off the monthly
report in just an hour. Damn He's quick. Knockoff can
also be used to talk about discounting the price of something.
When I bought a new desk, they knocked off fifty
dollars because there was a scratch in the wood on
the side of the desk. At the auto shop, the
mechanic told me that he could knock off one hundred
dollars if I paid in cash. What a nice guy.
Keep in mind, the best way to remember English like
this and any other phrase or word in English is
to take that phrase or word, write it in a
sentence that's true for you or true in your world,
and then memorize your sentences. Did you know? You can
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practice this English point with speaking in writing checked by me.
To learn more, just visit my Happy English dot com
and choose podcast lesson eight oh two. Remember, learning another
language is not easy, but it's not impossible, and I'm
here to help you on your journey.
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