"knock the living daylights out of" meaning in English

See knock the living daylights out of in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-knock the living daylights out of.ogg [Australia] Forms: knocks the living daylights out of [present, singular, third-person], knocking the living daylights out of [participle, present], knocked the living daylights out of [participle, past], knocked the living daylights out of [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=knock the living daylights out of}} knock the living daylights out of (third-person singular simple present knocks the living daylights out of, present participle knocking the living daylights out of, simple past and past participle knocked the living daylights out of)
  1. (idiomatic) To beat or strike someone. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-T5Yn0Ql6
  2. (idiomatic) To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Violence Synonyms: clobber, beat the daylights out of, knock the daylights out of
    Sense id: en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-q9qkdnsX Disambiguation of Violence: 9 81 9 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 4 91 5 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 6 84 10 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 6 84 11
  3. (figurative) To greatly excel against (someone or something). Tags: figuratively
    Sense id: en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-I3sfd4bQ

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for knock the living daylights out of meaning in English (3.9kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "knocks the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "knocking the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "knocked the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "knocked the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "knock the living daylights out of"
      },
      "expansion": "knock the living daylights out of (third-person singular simple present knocks the living daylights out of, present participle knocking the living daylights out of, simple past and past participle knocked the living daylights out of)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1939, Ruth McKenney, Industrial Valley, page 255",
          "text": "Boy, the fellows said he just knocked the living daylights out of him, bounced him six feet across the ground.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To beat or strike someone."
      ],
      "id": "en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-T5Yn0Ql6",
      "links": [
        [
          "beat",
          "beat"
        ],
        [
          "strike",
          "strike"
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To beat or strike someone."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "4 91 5",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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        },
        {
          "_dis": "9 81 9",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
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          "orig": "en:Violence",
          "parents": [
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            "Fundamental"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1954, Denzil Batchelor, Big Fight: The Story of World Championship Boxing, →OCLC, page 65",
          "text": "He won the English championship from the six-foot-three-inch, seventeen-stone Sam Hurst, the Staleybridge Infant, knocking the living daylights out of this champion",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person."
      ],
      "id": "en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-q9qkdnsX",
      "links": [
        [
          "thoroughly",
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          "decisively",
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          "knocking out",
          "knock out"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "0 72 28",
          "word": "clobber"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "0 72 28",
          "word": "beat the daylights out of"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "0 72 28",
          "word": "knock the daylights out of"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1963, “10 second summary”, in Business Management, volume 25, page 38",
          "text": "...where new and better depreciation regulations and a 7% business investment credit knocked the living daylights out of normal and historical accounting procedures...",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To greatly excel against (someone or something)."
      ],
      "id": "en-knock_the_living_daylights_out_of-en-verb-I3sfd4bQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "excel",
          "excel"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) To greatly excel against (someone or something)."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
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      "tags": [
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    }
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  "word": "knock the living daylights out of"
}
{
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    "English lemmas",
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    "English terms with audio links",
    "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
    "English verbs",
    "en:Violence"
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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "knocks the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
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    },
    {
      "form": "knocking the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
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        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "knocked the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
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    },
    {
      "form": "knocked the living daylights out of",
      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1939, Ruth McKenney, Industrial Valley, page 255",
          "text": "Boy, the fellows said he just knocked the living daylights out of him, bounced him six feet across the ground.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To beat or strike someone."
      ],
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          "beat",
          "beat"
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      ],
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        "(idiomatic) To beat or strike someone."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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          "text": "He won the English championship from the six-foot-three-inch, seventeen-stone Sam Hurst, the Staleybridge Infant, knocking the living daylights out of this champion",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person."
      ],
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          "thoroughly",
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        [
          "decisively",
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          "knocking out",
          "knock out"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
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    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
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          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To greatly excel against (someone or something)."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "excel",
          "excel"
        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) To greatly excel against (someone or something)."
      ],
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      "tags": [
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "clobber"
    },
    {
      "word": "beat the daylights out of"
    },
    {
      "word": "knock the daylights out of"
    }
  ],
  "word": "knock the living daylights out of"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.