Knocker

Knocker (pronounced nok-er)

(1) A person or thing that knocks.

(2) A sometimes ornamental hinged knob, bar, etc on (usually) a door, for use in knocking.

(3) In informal use, a persistent and carping critic; a faultfinder; nit-picker.

(4) In vulgar slang, a female breast (usually in the plural, for obvious reasons).

(5) In slang as “on the knocker”, canvassing or selling door-to-door (UK); promptly; on time; a correct (Australia & New Zealand).

(6) In slang, one who defaults on payment of a wager (an archaic North of England dialectical form).

(7) In slang, a person who is strikingly handsome or otherwise admirable; a stunner (an archaic variation of “a knock-out”).

(8) A dwarf, goblin, or sprite imagined to dwell in mines and to indicate the presence of ore by knocking (South Wales, archaic dialectical eighteenth & nineteenth century form).

(9) In the arcade game pinball, a mechanical device in a pinball table that produces a loud percussive noise.

(10) In entomology, a large cockroach, especially Blaberus giganteus, of semitropical America, which is able to produce a loud knocking sound.

(11) In geology, a large, boulder-shaped outcrop of bedrock in an otherwise low-lying landscape, chiefly associated with a mélange.

1375-1400: An agent noun from the Middle English knock, the construct being knock + -er.  Knock was from the Middle English knokken, from the Old English cnocian, ġecnocian & cnucian (to knock, pound on, beat), from the Proto-West Germanic knokōn, from the Proto-Germanic knukōną (to knock), a suffixed form of knu- & kneu- (to pound on, beat), from the primitive Indo-European gen- (to squeeze, pinch, kink, ball up, concentrate). The English word was cognate with the Middle High German knochen (to hit), the Old English cnuian & cnuwian (to pound, knock) and the Old Norse knoka.  It was related to the Danish knuge and the Swedish knocka (to hug).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  The –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun.  It added to a noun it denoted an occupation.  The sense of "door banger" is from the 1590s although the precise use in architecture of a "metal device fixed to the outside of a door for banging to give notice when someone desires admission" seems not to have been formalised until 1794.  The use to refer to breasts wasn’t noted until 1941.

Knocker-upper using bamboo knocker, circa 1900.

Mentioned in Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) Great Expectations (1860-1861), the knocker-upper (or knock-up) was an occupation created by the demands of the industrial revolution in late eighteenth century which demanded an often newly-urbanized workforce to appear in factories on time for shifts, the punctuality important because of the need to synchronize the attendance of labour to machines.  At the time, alarm clocks were neither cheap nor generally available but the role persisted in some parts of northern England, well into the twentieth century, long after electricity and alarm clocks became ubiquitous, the knocker-uppers sometime on the payroll of mill or factory owners.  The role was sometimes combined with employment by local authorities, the knocker-upper paid while on his “waking-up” rounds manually to extinguish the street-lamps.

Bronze door knockers from earlier centuries.

Knocker-upper Mary Smith using peas-shooter, London, circa 1930.

The tool used depended on the need.  Knocker-uppers tended to use a short, hardwood stick to bang on doors and a lighter one, often made of bamboo to tap on windows, the latter in some towns long enough to reach the upper stories although there are photographs of pea-shooters being used in London, apparently a dried pea projective the only practical way to reach the third floor.  The nature of service was customised according to need.  In places where shifts were invariable, the knocker-upper tended to work from a list which only occasionally changed whereas in areas where industries ran multiple shifts and an employee’s start and finish times could change from day to day, slate boards were often attached to the wall next to the door with the desired hour nominated, these known as "knocky-up boards" or "wake-up slates".

When door knockers go rogue.