knock out — impress greatly
phrasal verbC1IELTS 7+informaloccasional
To amaze or impress someone very much, often by being unexpectedly good, beautiful, or effective.
Say it like a native
Textbook The performance impressed the audience enormously.
Native That performance just knocked me out.
'Knock out' (informal) vividly means blow you away. 'Impressed enormously' is flat.
Pattern: knock someone out
In use
- The performance absolutely knocked me out—it was breathtaking from start to finish.emotion
- While many films are enjoyable, only a few truly knock audiences out with their originality and emotional impact.IELTS speaking
Common mistake
✗ The view knocked out me.
✓ The view knocked me out.
With a pronoun, the object goes in the middle — 'knocked me out'.
Common collocations
knock + out— knocked me out, the food, that view, absolutely
Don't confuse it
Unlike the B1 sense ('make someone unconscious'), this sense is figurative and means to impress or amaze someone. It does not involve physical action or competition, as in the B2 sense.
Related
- knock out (make someone unconscious) — 'knock out' also has the more basic meaning 'make someone unconscious'; this is the advanced sense.