Used to express a completed action that took place before another specific past action occurred.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In that case, OpenAI agents had knocked new account sign-ups at RubyGems offline.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
Julie said the experience had knocked her confidence.
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2026
He told me ICE had knocked over the police tape during one of their advances and no police or first responders remained.
From Slate ● Jan. 25, 2026
Around the same time, the trading platform Robinhood also said the AWS outage had knocked it offline.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
It was as if he were a king and someone had knocked his crown into the dirt.
From "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates" by Wes Moore
