Knocked Up: Pregnancy Slang in America, Wake-Up Call in Britain

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jessica.

Hello, Jessica, this is Grant and Martha. What’s going on over there?

Nothing much. How are you?

All right, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Phoenix.

Well, do you have a question for us today?

I do, I do. I was calling because I was wondering where the term knocked up came from.

Now may we ask what got you thinking about this expression?

Well, I just, I saw the movie and I thought, and I just started thinking to myself, that is an odd term.

That is odd.

The movie Knocked Up.

Yeah.

And what’s the basic plot of that?

Well, this girl gets knocked up and she gets pregnant and one night stand and they end up having the baby.

It’s like a love story, kind of.

-huh.

You have any theories about where that expression might have come from?

No, not at all.

Okay.

Well, I can tell you that since the 16th century, one meaning of the word knocked up is to have sex with.

And in fact, in the old days, a knocking shop was a brothel.

Oh.

And there was also an old expression to knock out an apple.

Knocking out an apple meant getting somebody pregnant.

So it’s sort of the idea of knocking on a tree and an apple falls out.

Why knock up?

Yeah, well, that’s a good question because if you look up the word knock in the dictionary, there are all kinds of different ways that knock takes on a different meaning depending on the preposition, right?

You have knock off, knock about, knock down.

And then you also have knock up.

And at some point, probably in 19th century of America, we started using the expression over here, knocked up, meaning to be pregnant.

And in England, you know, it means something entirely different.

Did you know that?

I didn’t know that.

Yeah, well, good.

In case you go to London and, you know, spend the night someplace and somebody says, I’m going to knock you up in the morning, don’t get alarmed.

Because what they mean is it’s kind of like knock on the door.

Right.

Knock on your door, that’s right.

Yeah, okay.

It’s one of the famous misunderstandings between the two Englishes.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s very interesting.

I’m going to go to work and tell everybody.

You are?

Yeah, this is something we’ve been talking about.

I’m a nurse, and it’s a big room of women, and we just talk about these things all the time.

Oh, okay.

Do you write like K-U on the charts?

For the pregnant ladies, you write K-U on the charts.

It’s like your own lingo.

That’s pretty good.

I think we probably will now.

That’s funny.

Well, thank you so much for your call, Jessica.

I hope we helped you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Pleasure talking with you.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye.

We talked about pregnant before, that when my wife was pregnant, she and I would often say, I would say that we’re pregnant.

Yeah.

But I don’t think I could ever get away with saying we’re knocked up.

That really is just the woman’s position, isn’t it?

That’s interesting.

Well, if you have something you’d like to ask us, the number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us at words@waywordradio.org.