Word.ws English Dictionary

knocked the living daylights out of

knocked the living daylights out of is the simple past and past participle of knock the living daylights out of.

Meaning of knock the living daylights out of

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

Questions about knocked the living daylights out of

What is knocked the living daylights out of the simple past and past participle of?
Knocked the living daylights out of is the simple past and past participle of knock the living daylights out of.

Words near knocked the living daylights out of in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knocked the living daylights out of (page history and authors); 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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