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Originally Posted by andyh2000
It's possible that 'knock [him/her/them] up' is still an idiom meaning 'wake up' in some dialects of British English. At least it was about twenty years ago - I was on a trip and somebody I knew vaguely happened to be on the same trip in the same hotel. She asked me to knock her up in the morning - luckily I guessed what she meant although I hadn't come across the phrase in that context before.
Andrew
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I have friends/acquaintances that STILL use this, in the UK and in Ireland. I may have giggled like a 12y.o. the first time I heard it used, 30-ish years ago, but thankfully, I've grown up since then. So, yes, it's still in use. Not commonplace here, in the US, but still in use. (And IIRC, I have at least one Canuck friend that uses it as well.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Maybe depends on your age, culture and how many old books you read?
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Yeah, to some extent, or how...difficult you want to be about your reading material. I won't put some book down from the 1920's, let's say, because it's racist or sexist or homophobic. If you can't take people and events from the past as they really were, you're trying to rewrite history--and that never ends well.
Hitch