Word.ws English Dictionary

knock someone down with a feather

knock someone down with a feather is the alternative form of knock someone over with a feather.

Meaning of knock someone over with a feather

Verb

knock someone over with a feather (third-person singular simple present knocks someone over with a feather, present participle knocking someone over with a feather, simple past and past participle knocked someone over with a feather)

  1. (excessive, idiomatic, informal) To greatly surprise or astonish someone.
    • She hardly, she said, believed her own senses. You might have knocked her down with a feather. She did not know whether she stood on her head or her heels.1838 February 17, “Review of Books. Hood’s Own. No. 1. Baily.”, in The Idler, and Breakfast-table Companion; a New and Fashionable Weekly Journal of Literature, Fine Arts, Music, Amusement...

Forms of knock someone down with a feather

third-person singular presentknocks someone down with a feather
present participleknocking someone down with a feather
past participleknocked someone down with a feather
pastknocked someone down with a feather

Questions about knock someone down with a feather

What is knock someone down with a feather the alternative form of?
Knock someone down with a feather is the alternative form of knock someone over with a feather.

Words near knock someone down with a feather in the dictionary

  1. knock rummy
  2. knock shop
  3. knock shops
  4. knock sideways
  5. knock some sense into
  6. knock someone down with a feather
  7. knock someone flat
  8. knock someone for six
  9. knock someone into the middle of next week
  10. knock someone off their perch
  11. knock someone out of time

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knock someone down with a feather (page history and authors); knock someone over with a feather (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-knock someone down with a feather.ogg.

Cite this entry: “knock someone down with a feather.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knock_someone_down_with_a_feather. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.