soft knock
n.— «The Soldiers perform what is known as soft knocks, versus a more aggressive approach to enter the houses. They announce their intentions to enter houses over a loud speaker, asking the residents to unlock their front gates and doors and wait inside their homes for the U.S. Soldiers to come to them. “It’s a different tempo than what we originally started with and what the unit before us was operating under. But now we realize it’s better to put out our message in a kind of soft knock form,” said 1st Lt. Gregory Luttman, the platoon leader in charge of this mission. “That’s basically what we do, just come in real soft and try to engage the people, not frighten them, and set them at ease so that we can effectively get our message out and get information from the people,” Luttman continued.» —“U.S. Soldiers Knock Softly to Make a Big Impact” by Amanda Morrissey Blackanthem.com Mar. 21, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The new book Bye Bye I Love You: The Story of Our First and Last Words (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Michael Erard is a deeply researched, often intensely personal exploration of the ways people communicate at both the beginning and end of life...
The haunting new novel Clear (Bookshop|Amazon) by Carys Davies is set amid the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, a relentless program of forced evictions that drove whole communities of tenant farmers off the land. The story concerns a...