Word.ws English Dictionary

knock the living daylights out of

knock the living daylights out of verb: to beat or strike someone.

Verb

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.
    • Boy, the fellows said he just knocked the living daylights out of him, bounced him six feet across the ground.1939, Ruth McKenney, Industrial Valley, →ISBN, page 255
  2. (idiomatic) To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone in a physical fight, especially by knocking out that person.
    • 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 champion1954, Denzil Batchelor, Big Fight: The Story of World Championship Boxing, →OCLC, page 65
    Synonyms:
    clobber
  3. (figuratively) To greatly excel against (someone or something).
    • ...where new and better depreciation regulations and a 7% business investment credit knocked the living daylights out of normal and historical accounting procedures...1963, “10 second summary”, in Business Management, volume 25, page 38

Synonyms of knock the living daylights out of

Forms of knock the living daylights out of

third-person singular presentknocks the living daylights out of
present participleknocking the living daylights out of
past participleknocked the living daylights out of
pastknocked the living daylights out of
alternative formbeat the daylights out of
alternative formknock the daylights out of

Questions about knock the living daylights out of

What does knock the living daylights out of mean?
Knock the living daylights out of means to beat or strike someone.
What part of speech is knock the living daylights out of?
Knock the living daylights out of is a verb.
What is the past tense of knock the living daylights out of?
The past tense of knock the living daylights out of is knocked the living daylights out of.

Words near knock the living daylights out of in the dictionary

  1. knock someone's wind out
  2. knock the ball out of the park
  3. knock the corners off
  4. knock the daylight out of
  5. knock the daylights out of
  6. knock the living daylights out of
  7. knock the persimmon
  8. knock the stuffing out of
  9. knock the wind out of someone's sails
  10. knock together
  11. knock under

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knock the living daylights out of (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 the living daylights out of.ogg.

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