Knockout

How to spell knockout

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce knockout

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does knockout mean?

1. nounA decisive blow in boxing that ends the fight by leaving an opponent unable to rise.
2. nounA competition in which a single defeat eliminates a team or player from the next round.
3. nounInformally, a person or thing that is extremely impressive or attractive.

Knockout in a sentence

• The champion won the title with a first-round knockout.

• The league season ends and the knockout stage begins next month.

• The new kitchen design was an absolute knockout.

• The referee stopped the bout and recorded a knockout.

• Their team reached the knockout rounds for the first time in years.

• Everyone agreed the wedding venue was a real knockout.

Where does knockout come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound formed from the verb 'knock' and the adverb 'out'. 'Knock' descends from the Old English cnocian, meaning 'to strike or pound', a word that was almost certainly imitative, coined to echo the dull sound of one hard thing hitting another. 'Out' is among the oldest words in the language, an Old English particle marking movement away or into the open. The two were joined as the verb phrase 'to knock out' long before the single noun settled, and by the late nineteenth century 'knockout' had become a fixed term in the prize ring for the blow that ends a contest by leaving an opponent on the floor. From boxing it spread into broader use: a 'knockout' competition eliminates losers round by round, and informally a 'knockout' came to mean anything or anyone strikingly impressive. The spelling trap is simply that it is one solid word, with no hyphen and a silent 'k' inherited from the old verb.

How the word is built

• knock (Old English cnocian: to strike)
• out (adverb particle)