Word.ws English Dictionary

knocking on the head

knocking on the head is the present participle and gerund of knock on the head.

Meaning of knock on the head

Verb

knock on the head (third-person singular simple present knocks on the head, present participle knocking on the head, simple past and past participle knocked on the head)

  1. (transitive) To put an end to; to defeat or frustrate (a scheme or project).
    • My young brothers and sisters looked very awestruck at this first glimpse of barbaric life, and I fear many of the theories they had formed about going into the wilds alone, and experiencing some Robinson Crusoe-like adventures, were suddenly "knocked on the head," to use a forcible colonial...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 46

Questions about knocking on the head

What is knocking on the head the present participle and gerund of?
Knocking on the head is the present participle and gerund of knock on the head.

Words near knocking on the head in the dictionary

  1. knocking off
  2. knocking off someone's block
  3. knocking on
  4. knocking on heaven's door
  5. knocking on the door of
  6. knocking on the head
  7. knocking on wood
  8. knocking one down with a feather
  9. knocking one out
  10. knocking one out of the ball park
  11. knocking one out of the ballpark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knocking on the head (page history and authors); knock on the head (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:

Cite this entry: “knocking on the head.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knocking_on_the_head. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.