knock someone off their perch
knock someone off their perch verb: to defeat or overcome someone who was in a dominant position.
Verb
knock someone off their perch (third-person singular simple present knocks someone off their perch, present participle knocking someone off their perch, simple past and past participle knocked someone off their perch)
- To defeat or overcome someone who was in a dominant position.
- Tiger Woods has been knocked off his perch as the No1 player in the world after Vijay Singh beat him in the Deutsche Bank Open last night.2004 September 7, “Singh on top of the world”, in The Guardian
- He was the third qualifier of the day and posted a 4-lap, 10-mile qualifying average of 227.566 miles an hour on the two-and-a-half-mile oval, then had to wait through nearly six hours while other drivers tried to knock him off his perch.2005 May 16, The Associated Press, “Kanaan Wins Indy Pole; Patrick Settles for Fourth”, in New York Times
Forms of knock someone off their perch
| third-person singular present | knocks someone off their perch |
|---|---|
| present participle | knocking someone off their perch |
| past participle | knocked someone off their perch |
| past | knocked someone off their perch |
Questions about knock someone off their perch
- What does knock someone off their perch mean?
- Knock someone off their perch means to defeat or overcome someone who was in a dominant position.
- What part of speech is knock someone off their perch?
- Knock someone off their perch is a verb.
- What is the past tense of knock someone off their perch?
- The past tense of knock someone off their perch is knocked someone off their perch.
Words near knock someone off their perch in the dictionary
- knock some sense into
- knock someone down with a feather
- knock someone flat
- knock someone for six
- knock someone into the middle of next week
- knock someone off their perch
- knock someone out of time
- knock someone over with a feather
- knock someone's block off
- knock someone's head off
- knock someone's lights out
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: knock someone off their perch (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-knock someone off his perch.ogg.
Cite this entry: “knock someone off their perch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knock_someone_off_their_perch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.