knockout drops
- noun
- NSFW
- When the kettle whistled at him, he poured the census taker a cup of instant coffee and added a few knockout drops from a small bottle that stood on his spice rack.
Examples
-
He was caught trying to use knockout drops on an unsuspecting guest at the party.
-
"Not with them knockout drops in 'em.
Fiction book (1993) -
Would knockout drops work on a demon?
Fiction book (2000) -
And G-2 should pour knockout drops into the water supply.
-
The bartender secretly added knockout drops to the woman's drink, making her lose consciousness.
-
She warned her friends about the danger of knockout drops that could render someone unconscious.
Synonyms
To secretly put a drug into someone's drink to make them unconscious
Antonyms
How Sedating
- Specialized
- NSFW
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound combines 'knockout' (causing unconsciousness) with 'drops' (small doses of liquid), so a learner who knows both constituents can infer it is a liquid given to render someone unconscious. This is a regular, compositional noun-noun formation and follows a cross-linguistically common pattern, making it immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The phrase knockout drops comes from the picture of small drops of liquid that knock out a person. One popular story says criminals would slip a few drops into a drink so the victim fell 'unconscious', so today the phrase means 'a liquid secretly given to make someone unconscious'.