knock off

phraseB22 meaningsinformal · an editor’s judgementNot compared — the two pools are counted one word at a time, so a phrase has no score

To knock off is to take an amount off a price — or, quite separately, to stop work for the day.

The discount sense is what you hope for when haggling, and a trader will knock off a few pounds to close a sale. The stopping sense is British and thoroughly informal, and knocking-off time is when the shift ends. There are two more: a knock-off is a cheap imitation of a branded product, and in crime slang knocking something off means stealing it.

Definitions of knock off

1phraseknock offTo reduce a price by an amount.B2
“He agreed to knock off twenty pounds for cash.”
2phrasestopTo stop work.B2
“We usually knock off at half past five.”

Where it comes from

In the verb sense of stopping work, said to be from the practice aboard slave galleys to have a man beat time for the rowers by knocking on a block or drum; when he stopped, the rowers could rest.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Phrasal Verbs, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 26 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

← Vocabulary