Word.ws English Dictionary

punch someone's lights out

punch someone's lights out verb: to give someone a serious beating using one's fists; to punch someone until he or she is unconscious.

Verb

punch someone's lights out (third-person singular simple present punches someone's lights out, present participle punching someone's lights out, simple past and past participle punched someone's lights out)

  1. (idiomatic) To give someone a serious beating using one's fists; to punch someone until he or she is unconscious.
    • "My intention was to punch his lights out," Parker said of Garber, "but as I got closer to the mound, my faculties came back and I cooled off. I just him and asked him what was going on."1979 May 10, “NL Action is Wild and Woolly”, in Spokane Daily Chronicle, retrieved 12 Nov 2015, page 45
    • After nasty phone calls, curses hurled over the back fence, fist-shaking, and other attempts to impress him with your seriousness, you meet him at the supermarket, lose control, and punch his lights out.1980 July 17, Mike Steere, “Mediation Can Replace Lawsuits”, in Toledo Blade, retrieved 12 Nov 2015, page 18

Synonyms of punch someone's lights out

Forms of punch someone's lights out

third-person singular presentpunches someone's lights out
present participlepunching someone's lights out
past participlepunched someone's lights out
pastpunched someone's lights out

Origin of punch someone's lights out

Chiefly by the metaphor of extinguishing someone's lights as sources of illumination (thus putting out their lights, e.g., snuffing out their lamps, lanterns, candles, or torches), but the sense of light as sightedness or vision is cognitively adjacent, nearly setting up an interpretation of lights as referring to the eyes themselves, which close (via the eyelids) at the advent of unconsciousness; the potentially variable figurativeness behind by one's lights is comparable here.

Questions about punch someone's lights out

What does punch someone's lights out mean?
Punch someone's lights out means to give someone a serious beating using one's fists; to punch someone until he or she is unconscious.
What part of speech is punch someone's lights out?
Punch someone's lights out is a verb.
What is the past tense of punch someone's lights out?
The past tense of punch someone's lights out is punched someone's lights out.

Words near punch someone's lights out in the dictionary

  1. punch outs
  2. punch pocket
  3. punch pockets
  4. punch press
  5. punch presses
  6. punch someone's lights out
  7. punch someone's ticket
  8. punch the air
  9. punch up
  10. punch ups
  11. punch upward

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: punch someone's lights out (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-punch someone's lights out.ogg.

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