Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: Just knock it off, would y’all?

My comments:

Y’all, by the way, is a contraction of two words, you all. Americans in the South use y’all a lot, colloquially.

By y’all, here, the speaker means you-all, all of you, everybody.

Just knock it off?

That mean’s stop it. Whatever is going on, cut it out.

This sounds like, for example, a teacher admonishing his or her class: stop talking and listen (to what the teacher has to say).

To knock is to hit or touch with force and in a quick move. We knock on the door, for example, before being allowed into a house. To knock something off is to remove it by pushing or other forceful action. We inadvertently knock a vase or a tea cup off the table, for instance.

As an idiom, “knock it off” is an order commanding someone to stop saying or doing something that’s annoying.

In the same way a knock is quick and snappy, by asking someone to “knock it off”, they want their action to stop now.

Yes, right now, at this very moment.

According to a discussion on StackExchange.com, “knock it off” may come from, interestingly, the auction house:

Etymology online says “knock it off” is a request given to an auctioneer to end bidding (by knocking his gavel). While the entry puts the first usage as 1880, the same entry cites a US Senate record of 1834.

Command “knock it off” (“stop it”) is first recorded 1880, perhaps from auctioneer’s term for “dispose of quickly:”

... if no body bid, after it was cried two or three times, he would say, knock it off, knock it off. [U.S. Senate record, 1834]

Here, by “knock it off”, the auctioneer is happy that this particular deal is done and dealt with – at long last.

Anyways, remember, when people use “knock it off” as a command, they’re asking you to stop doing something that’s been going on for some time and that something has, hence, become really annoying or irritating.

And here are media examples:

1. Gregg Popovich called Spurs’ fans booing of Kawhi Leonard “hateful” and “mean-spirited,” and the San Antonio coach has no regrets taking the microphone and imploring the home crowd to knock it off.

“Absolutely not,” Popovich said Friday night before the Spurs played the Warriors. “It’s pretty easy to understand. I listened to it for a while and it just got louder and louder and uglier and uglier, and I felt sorry for him, and I was embarrassed for our city, for our organization.

“Because that’s not who we are, that’s not how we’ve conducted ourselves for the last 25 years. It’s the opposite of the way we’ve conducted ourselves, the way we’ve worked in the community.”

While Popovich considered it a “one-off” with the fans’ behavior and credited them for their years of support, he still found it extremely disrespectful to treat former Spurs All-Star Leonard, now with the Clippers, that way in his return to Frost Bank Center.

Late in the first half of Wednesday’s 109-102 loss, Popovich took the mic and told the crowd to stop the booing. San Antonio lost its 10th straight game.

“It’s kind of an indication of the world we live in today. It was hateful,” Popovich said. “It was really disrespectful, it was just mean-spirited. We’re the team that when somebody comes back to town after having been a Spur, so you first come back to town, we show a video of them. I can remember when Kawhi and Danny Green came back from Toronto, we showed videos of those guys and the crowd didn’t react like that. That tells the whole story, and now it’s five years later, six years later, and that’s going to happen.”

- Gregg Popovich has no regrets telling Spurs fans to stop booing Kawhi Leonard, Associated Press, November 25, 2023.

2. During Iowa’s opening-round game against Holy Cross in the 2024 women’s NCAA tournament, Hawkeyes superstar Caitlin Clark seemingly got some tough love from her dad in the stands.

As it looked like Clark was expressing her frustration over some of the game’s officiating, you could see what certainly looked like Clark’s dad, Brent, yelling at her to knock it off in the stands.

Later, CBS Sports reporter Brad Crawford noticed Brent Clark expressing that Caitlin Clark be taken out of the game after getting an offensive foul and turning the ball over more than a few times.

As Brent Clark has undoubtedly been to plenty of his daughter’s games over the years, it’s not surprising to see him unafraid of expressing his feelings during the game, even to his daughter when he’s not happy with her complaining to the refs.

- Caitlin Clark’s dad seemingly telling her to stop complaining about the officials reminded everyone of their dad, USAToday.com, March 23, 2024.

3. Sure, it’s not uncommon for politicians to use popular songs at events and campaign rallies – but lots of artists have drawn the line when it comes to Donald Trump. Since the former president began campaigning ahead of the 2016 election, some musicians have not been happy to hear that the Trump team has played their music, often without authorization. From Canadian singer Céline Dion to the family of soul icon Isaac Hayes, they’ve done everything from issuing public statements to sending cease-and-desist letters to Trump through lawyers.

Here’s a list of the artists who have told Trump to back off and stop using their songs.

Beyoncé (2024)

While most complaints have focused on music played at Trump rallies, Beyoncé and her team issued a cease-and-desist letter after a Trump campaign spokesperson used her song “Freedom” in a short video shared online. The clip paired the Lemonade track with a 13-second clip of Trump getting off an airplane – a pretty pointed choice as “Freedom” has become an unofficial anthem of sorts for the Kamala Harris campaign. While Beyoncé did give the Harris campaign permission to use the song, a source close to the musician told Rolling Stone they “absolutely did not give permission” to Trump campaign, and that Bey’s label had threatened to issue a cease and desist.

Céline Dion (2024)

Céline Dion was not happy when Donald Trump used her Titanic classic “My Heart Will Go On” at a recent campaign rally. “And really, THAT song?” she wrote on social media when she learned he’d been playing the hit. The Canadian star’s team issued a statement on Aug. 10 slamming the former president for “unauthorized usage” of the track from the Nineties film. “Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use,” the statement from Dion’s team said.

The family of James Horner, the song’s composer who died in 2015, also said in a statement that “the Horner family does not endorse or support the Trump/Vance campaign or its use of the song at its events. The campaign does not reflect the beliefs and values of James Horner or his family. It is important to the family that his music not be used by those seeking to profit inappropriately from his work after his death.”

Phil Collins (2020)

MAGA energy was not in the air when Phil Collins made “In the Air Tonight.” The musician issued a cease-and-desist to Trump for usage of his 1981 single during the 2020 election. In the letter sent to Trump, Collins slammed the candidate for using the song “as a satirical reference to Covid-19” when Iowa was going through a spike in cases. “Mr. Collins does not condone the apparent trivialization of Covid-19,” the letter stated, adding that the musician had “serious concerns” that Trump’s usage would “damage” Collins’ reputation.

Steven Tyler (2018)

Donald Trump was living on the edge of a lawsuit in 2018 when Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler felt it was necessary to send a cease-and-desist letter to the then-president’s campaign for using the song “Livin’ on the Edge.” This came three years after the band already told Trump to knock it off with playing “Dream On” at rallies.

- All the Artists Who Don’t Want Donald Trump Using Their Music, RollingStone.com, August 30, 2024.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣）