"knock into a cocked hat" meaning in All languages combined

See knock into a cocked hat on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

IPA: /ˈnɒk ˌɪntuː ə ˌkɒkt ˈhæt/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈnɑk ˌɪntu ə ˌkɑkt ˈhæt/ [General-American] Audio: En-us-knock into a cocked hat.oga Forms: knocks into a cocked hat [present, singular, third-person], knocking into a cocked hat [participle, present], knocked into a cocked hat [participle, past], knocked into a cocked hat [past]
Etymology: A cocked hat is one with the brim turned up to form two or three points (a bicorn or tricorn). The verb may refer: * to someone or something being knocked or hit out of shape like such a hat, or a person having a cocked hat forced on to their head; or * to a person knocking down all but three pins in a game of ninepins, or to the similar game called “cocked hat” in which only three pins are set up in a triangle, although these may simply be allusions to the shape of a tricorn. It has been pointed out that evidence linking these games to the verb is lacking. Etymology templates: {{glossary|verb}} verb, {{nb...|By a Virginian. 􂀿...􂁀 In Two Volumes.}} […], {{nb...|No. 82, Cliff-Street.}} […], {{nb...}} […] Head templates: {{en-verb|knock<> into a cocked hat}} knock into a cocked hat (third-person singular simple present knocks into a cocked hat, present participle knocking into a cocked hat, simple past and past participle knocked into a cocked hat)
  1. (transitive, originally US, colloquial, dated) To beat up or seriously injure (a person); to badly damage (a thing). Tags: colloquial, dated, transitive Categories (topical): Violence Synonyms: beat into a cocked hat
    Sense id: en-knock_into_a_cocked_hat-en-verb-m1HO2xtp Disambiguation of Violence: 69 31 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Italian translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 53 47 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 52 48 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 54 46 Disambiguation of Terms with Italian translations: 55 45
  2. (transitive, chiefly British, colloquial, figuratively) To completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat (a person; an argument, idea, or proposition; or a thing). Tags: British, colloquial, figuratively, transitive Synonyms: beat into a cocked hat Translations (to completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat): gettare alle ortiche (Italian)
    Sense id: en-knock_into_a_cocked_hat-en-verb-wkivrnYF Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Italian translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 53 47 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 52 48 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 54 46 Disambiguation of Terms with Italian translations: 55 45 Disambiguation of 'to completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat': 6 94

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "A cocked hat is one with the brim turned up to form two or three points (a bicorn or tricorn). The verb may refer:\n* to someone or something being knocked or hit out of shape like such a hat, or a person having a cocked hat forced on to their head; or\n* to a person knocking down all but three pins in a game of ninepins, or to the similar game called “cocked hat” in which only three pins are set up in a triangle, although these may simply be allusions to the shape of a tricorn. It has been pointed out that evidence linking these games to the verb is lacking.",
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          "text": "Tho' I'll tell ye what, stranger, I'm none your mealy mouthed fellows, and I'm little jubus [dubious] that you're one of them there [John Quincy] Adams men. And I've just seen the time that I'd knock sich a fellow into a cocked hat as quick as name it. But [Andrew] Jackson is safe enough and he's jist the chickin what's able; Adams is done for til he's made over.",
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          "text": "[…] I jumped up and told Tom a short horse was soon curried, and I'd knock him into a cocked-hat if he said another word. And that broke up the conversation.",
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          "ref": "1833 June 27, Charles Gordon Greene, editor, The Boston Morning Post, volume IV, number 90, Boston, Mass.: Charles Gordon Greene, →OCLC, page 2, column 3:",
          "text": "A N. York paper giving the details of a riot which occurred in that city, says that \"a person was struck with a brick-bat, and knocked into a wheel-barrow.\" We have before heard of persons being \"knocked into a grease spot,\" and of others who had been threatened with being \"knocked into a cocked hat,\" but this is the first time we ever heard of any one being \"knocked into a wheel barrow.\"",
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          "text": "[A] fortunate accident […] happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for \"a skreeking little spalpeen,\" and then knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bed-post. This, I say, decided my fate, and made my fortune.",
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          "text": "A German astronomer says, that in twenty millions of years the earth will be destroyed by a comet! People may doubt and jeer at the idea: but wait till the time comes, and you’ll see that prophet, as the comet whisks along, knocking the earth into a ‘cocked hat,’ hanging by its tail, exclaiming, ‘I told you so, I told you so!’ But who will hear him?",
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          "text": "Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows like battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat.",
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          "ref": "1853, Vidi [pseudonym], chapter XII, in Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-agent, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., →OCLC, page 146:",
          "text": "\"That's a fact,\" said the Kentuckian, \"and knocks all his fine arguments into a cocked hat. Jist a minute ago I tho't slavery wall all right, and now I see it's all wrong, and has no kinder sort o' foundation.[\"]",
          "type": "quote"
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          "ref": "1884 October 25, “Never Write on Your Cuffs”, in Tid-bits: From All Sources […], volume I, number 10, New York, N.Y.: John W. Lovell Company, →OCLC, page 146, column 2:",
          "text": "\"The fact is,\" said Jim Keene, the great New York rival to Jay Gould, \"that no matter how clever and thorough a man's system of stock operating may be, there is always occurring some little unforeseen and apparently insignificant circumstance that is forever knocking the best laid-out plans into a cocked hat.\"",
          "type": "quote"
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          "ref": "1888 January 26, “Lord Brassey on imperial defence”, in The Pall Mall Gazette: An Evening Newspaper and Review, volume XLVII, number 7133, London: […] Richard Lambert, […], →OCLC, page 9, column 1:",
          "text": "A frigate of the modern type would knock a fort armed with obsolete guns into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "ref": "1935, Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr., “The Lunatic Fringe”, in Discovery: The Story of the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition, paperback edition, Lanham, Md., London: Rowman & Littlefield, published 2015, →ISBN, page 195:",
          "text": "And you guess the end of the world will probably look like that, […] with all things at last in equilibrium, the winds quiet, the sea frozen, the sky composed, and the earth in glacial quietude. Or so you fancy. Then along comes a walloping blizzard and knocks such night dreaming into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1936 April, H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken, “The Future of the Language”, in The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th edition, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC, page 607:",
          "text": "In its early forms it [English] was a highly inflected tongue – indeed, it was more inflected than modern German, and almost as much so as Russian. […] The impact of the [Norman] Conquest knocked this elaborate grammatical structure into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
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          "ref": "1971 August, Charles F. Treat, “The Great Metric Crusade (1914–1933)”, in A History of the Metric System Controversy in the United States: U.S. Metric Study Interim Report […] (National Bureau of Standards Special Publication; 345-10), Washington, D.C.: National Bureau of Standards, United States Department of Commerce, →OCLC, page 195:",
          "text": "Unlike the supporters of metric adoption, the opponents did not have to wage a campaign to accomplish their goal. All they had to do was knock into a cocked hat the claims advanced by the \"reformers.\"",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "ref": "2011, Larry Karp, chapter 1, in A Perilous Conception, Scottsdale, Ariz.: Poisoned Pen Press, →ISBN, page 4:",
          "text": "I thought I knew what to do about it, and had figured to sit down with Giselle after the conference to get her on board. But that idea had been knocked into a cocked hat along with the conference.",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "ref": "2012, W. Brewster Willcox, “A Two-horse Horserace”, in The Power of Paradox, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, part II (The Search for the Higgs and Why It Matters), pages 27–28:",
          "text": "If every particle has a corresponding anti-particle, as the Standard Model asserts, the question arises, Where has all the antimatter gone? Saying that's just the way it happens to be, doesn't satisfy many scientists. And it knocks into a cocked hat the whole Standard Model, which to this point, he [Martin Beech] assures us, has been \"highly successful in describing the observed particle zoo.\"",
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        "To completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat (a person; an argument, idea, or proposition; or a thing)."
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        "(transitive, chiefly British, colloquial, figuratively) To completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat (a person; an argument, idea, or proposition; or a thing)."
      ],
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          "_dis1": "6 94",
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          "sense": "to completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat",
          "word": "gettare alle ortiche"
        }
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  "etymology_text": "A cocked hat is one with the brim turned up to form two or three points (a bicorn or tricorn). The verb may refer:\n* to someone or something being knocked or hit out of shape like such a hat, or a person having a cocked hat forced on to their head; or\n* to a person knocking down all but three pins in a game of ninepins, or to the similar game called “cocked hat” in which only three pins are set up in a triangle, although these may simply be allusions to the shape of a tricorn. It has been pointed out that evidence linking these games to the verb is lacking.",
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          "ref": "1830 November 13, “A rencounter. From the Connersville, Ind. Political Clarion.”, in Frederick-Town Herald, volume XXIX, number 27, Fredericktown, Md.: […] William Ogden Niles, →OCLC, page 4, column 3:",
          "text": "Tho' I'll tell ye what, stranger, I'm none your mealy mouthed fellows, and I'm little jubus [dubious] that you're one of them there [John Quincy] Adams men. And I've just seen the time that I'd knock sich a fellow into a cocked hat as quick as name it. But [Andrew] Jackson is safe enough and he's jist the chickin what's able; Adams is done for til he's made over.",
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          "text": "[…] I jumped up and told Tom a short horse was soon curried, and I'd knock him into a cocked-hat if he said another word. And that broke up the conversation.",
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          "text": "A N. York paper giving the details of a riot which occurred in that city, says that \"a person was struck with a brick-bat, and knocked into a wheel-barrow.\" We have before heard of persons being \"knocked into a grease spot,\" and of others who had been threatened with being \"knocked into a cocked hat,\" but this is the first time we ever heard of any one being \"knocked into a wheel barrow.\"",
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          "text": "[A] fortunate accident […] happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for \"a skreeking little spalpeen,\" and then knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bed-post. This, I say, decided my fate, and made my fortune.",
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          "text": "A German astronomer says, that in twenty millions of years the earth will be destroyed by a comet! People may doubt and jeer at the idea: but wait till the time comes, and you’ll see that prophet, as the comet whisks along, knocking the earth into a ‘cocked hat,’ hanging by its tail, exclaiming, ‘I told you so, I told you so!’ But who will hear him?",
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          "text": "Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows like battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat.",
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          "text": "All the original ideas we had were knocked into a cocked hat by the latest survey.",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "1853, Vidi [pseudonym], chapter XII, in Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-agent, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., →OCLC, page 146:",
          "text": "\"That's a fact,\" said the Kentuckian, \"and knocks all his fine arguments into a cocked hat. Jist a minute ago I tho't slavery wall all right, and now I see it's all wrong, and has no kinder sort o' foundation.[\"]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1884 October 25, “Never Write on Your Cuffs”, in Tid-bits: From All Sources […], volume I, number 10, New York, N.Y.: John W. Lovell Company, →OCLC, page 146, column 2:",
          "text": "\"The fact is,\" said Jim Keene, the great New York rival to Jay Gould, \"that no matter how clever and thorough a man's system of stock operating may be, there is always occurring some little unforeseen and apparently insignificant circumstance that is forever knocking the best laid-out plans into a cocked hat.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1888 January 26, “Lord Brassey on imperial defence”, in The Pall Mall Gazette: An Evening Newspaper and Review, volume XLVII, number 7133, London: […] Richard Lambert, […], →OCLC, page 9, column 1:",
          "text": "A frigate of the modern type would knock a fort armed with obsolete guns into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1935, Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr., “The Lunatic Fringe”, in Discovery: The Story of the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition, paperback edition, Lanham, Md., London: Rowman & Littlefield, published 2015, →ISBN, page 195:",
          "text": "And you guess the end of the world will probably look like that, […] with all things at last in equilibrium, the winds quiet, the sea frozen, the sky composed, and the earth in glacial quietude. Or so you fancy. Then along comes a walloping blizzard and knocks such night dreaming into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1936 April, H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken, “The Future of the Language”, in The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th edition, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC, page 607:",
          "text": "In its early forms it [English] was a highly inflected tongue – indeed, it was more inflected than modern German, and almost as much so as Russian. […] The impact of the [Norman] Conquest knocked this elaborate grammatical structure into a cocked hat.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1971 August, Charles F. Treat, “The Great Metric Crusade (1914–1933)”, in A History of the Metric System Controversy in the United States: U.S. Metric Study Interim Report […] (National Bureau of Standards Special Publication; 345-10), Washington, D.C.: National Bureau of Standards, United States Department of Commerce, →OCLC, page 195:",
          "text": "Unlike the supporters of metric adoption, the opponents did not have to wage a campaign to accomplish their goal. All they had to do was knock into a cocked hat the claims advanced by the \"reformers.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Larry Karp, chapter 1, in A Perilous Conception, Scottsdale, Ariz.: Poisoned Pen Press, →ISBN, page 4:",
          "text": "I thought I knew what to do about it, and had figured to sit down with Giselle after the conference to get her on board. But that idea had been knocked into a cocked hat along with the conference.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, W. Brewster Willcox, “A Two-horse Horserace”, in The Power of Paradox, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, part II (The Search for the Higgs and Why It Matters), pages 27–28:",
          "text": "If every particle has a corresponding anti-particle, as the Standard Model asserts, the question arises, Where has all the antimatter gone? Saying that's just the way it happens to be, doesn't satisfy many scientists. And it knocks into a cocked hat the whole Standard Model, which to this point, he [Martin Beech] assures us, has been \"highly successful in describing the observed particle zoo.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat (a person; an argument, idea, or proposition; or a thing)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "completely",
          "completely"
        ],
        [
          "demolish",
          "demolish"
        ],
        [
          "nullify",
          "nullify"
        ],
        [
          "overthrow",
          "overthrow"
        ],
        [
          "defeat",
          "defeat#Verb"
        ],
        [
          "argument",
          "argument"
        ],
        [
          "idea",
          "idea"
        ],
        [
          "proposition",
          "proposition"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, chiefly British, colloquial, figuratively) To completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat (a person; an argument, idea, or proposition; or a thing)."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "beat into a cocked hat"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "British",
        "colloquial",
        "figuratively",
        "transitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnɒk ˌɪntuː ə ˌkɒkt ˈhæt/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnɑk ˌɪntu ə ˌkɑkt ˈhæt/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-us-knock into a cocked hat.oga",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/99/En-us-knock_into_a_cocked_hat.oga/En-us-knock_into_a_cocked_hat.oga.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/En-us-knock_into_a_cocked_hat.oga"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "to completely demolish, nullify, overthrow, or otherwise defeat",
      "word": "gettare alle ortiche"
    }
  ],
  "word": "knock into a cocked hat"
}

Download raw JSONL data for knock into a cocked hat meaning in All languages combined (11.2kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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