Meaning
To defeat someone utterly or comprehensively; in older use also to batter a person senseless or smash a thing out of shape. Now mostly figurative and common in sport and politics, as when the reigning champions are knocked into a cocked hat. Informal and dated; survives mostly in sports reporting and colourful commentary. Regional use: American English in origin; now dated in all varieties.
Origin
An Americanism of the early 1830s. The wordhistories blog's earliest examples are the North Carolina Spectator of 1 October 1830 (a battered hat punningly knocked into a cocked hat) and the Frederick-Town Herald of 13 November 1830 ('knock sich a fellow into a cocked hat'), with further uses from 1833-34, including William Alexander Caruthers's novel The Kentuckian in New-York (1834). The image rests on the cocked hat, the three-cornered hat with the brim turned up worn from the late 17th to the early 19th century; the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for cocked hat itself is John Dryden in 1677. To knock a thing into a cocked hat was to beat it out of all recognition or squash it into a three-cornered shape. Later bowling explanations - the American three-pin game called cocked hat, or a tenpin frame with only the three corner pins standing - are, per wordhistories, rationalisations after the fact, since the earliest uses show no connection with bowling.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- beat someone into a cocked hat
- knock someone into a cocked hat
- knocked into a cocked hat
Usage Examples
- The newcomers knocked the defending champions into a cocked hat, winning five nil.
- Fresh documentary evidence knocked the professor's theory into a cocked hat.
- Our bowlers knocked the visitors into a cocked hat before lunch on the second day.