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Use knocker in a sentence

Definition of knocker:

  • (noun) a boastful immoderate person
  • (noun) a person who knocks (as seeking to gain admittance);
  • (noun) one who disparages or belittles the worth of something
  • (noun) either of two soft fleshy milk-secreting glandular organs on the chest of a woman
  • (noun) a device (usually metal and ornamental) attached by a hinge to a door

Sentence Examples:

Then they left us to our pipes; but before the smoke was fairly started, there came the gallop of a horse up the roadway past the kitchen garden, and a moment later the great brass knocker was plied by a vigorous hand.

The "knocker-up" had shouldered his long wand, and paddled home to bed again; and the little stalls, at which the early workman stops for his half-penny cup of coffee, were packing up.

The brake- bands went on with a shriek and Jeremy and I pitched forward as the car brought up against the curb in front of an enormous door, whose brass knocker shone like gold in the rays of our headlights.

At the same moment a diminutive footman gave a rousing stroke with the knocker, and delivered into the hands of the old woman, who opened the door, a glass dish of delicacies such as are affected by sick persons.

On the cathedral door there is a curious old knocker, in the form of a monstrous face, which was placed there, centuries ago, for the benefit of fugitives from justice, who used to be entitled to sanctuary here.

There it came again very hard, and what was particularly astounding the knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not to be in the least afraid of the consequences.

Their patroness then shut the door, and away they went, with a great noise of flapping, and creaking, and straining, and the bright brass knocker, knocking one perpetual double knock of its own accord as they jolted heavily along.

One of his tales was how they had frightened the Colonel's mother by tying a lame hare by a horsehair to the knocker of the hall door.

This price of sixty minutes startled me a little; and, for a week, I meditated with some seriousness on the superior gaiety of a life spent in paving the streets, driving a wagon, or answering the knocker of a door.

He on the other side thundered at the door with the knocker, till that instrument had been unscrewed from within.

One man pressed the electric button, kicked the door, and pounded with the knocker, others hurled pebbles at the upper windows, and the fifth stood in the road and sang: "Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light?"

This door was provided with a heavy bronze knocker, but strangely enough the newcomers did not avail themselves of its use, but rapped on the wooden panels with their knuckles, giving three successive raps at regular intervals.

Its neatly grained shutters, fastened back by the sides of the windows, gave a pleasing idea of uniformity, while its white steps and polished brass knockers were suggestive of almost a Dutch cleanliness.

He raised the knocker with some difficulty, for his benumbed hands were stumps rather than hands.

This small door, encased in a full, heavy girding of stone, had a grated peephole, a heavy knocker, a large lock, hinges thick and knotted, a bristling of nails, an armor of plates, and hinges, so that altogether it was more of iron than of wood.

On the Sabbath he spoke nothing but Hebrew whatever the inconvenience and however numerous the misunderstandings, and if he perchance paid a visit he would not perform the "work" of lifting the knocker.

Facing you in the middle of the vestibule are double or folding doors, more or less ornate with bronze, ivory, and other work, and generally bearing a large ring or handle to serve either as a knocker or to pull the door to.

Tarns with swiftness darted up the steps and inserted a large, fat, wet hand between the raised knocker and its bed.

In the lobby she heard an unusual rapping on the glass of the front door, and sharply opened it to inform the late disturber that there existed a bell and a knocker for respectable people.

Then I rang the bell and plied the knocker and waited there on the steps for Jeannie Welsh to come bid me welcome, just as she did Emerson when he, too, used the scraper and plied the knocker and stood where I did then.

It was silent, it was dark with the blackness of darkness; it was like an unholy sepulcher that gave forth no sound, though we beat upon its sodden door with its rusted knocker until a dog howled dismally on the hillside afar off.

He laid his hand quickly on the knocker and lifted it; then he paused again and stopped short, as though in thought, and after the lapse of a few seconds, instead of allowing the knocker to fall abruptly, he placed it gently, and resumed his way with a sort of haste which had not been apparent previously.

The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of generations lost in the maze of oblivion.

Beside us was a row of little houses of warm red brick with peaked mansard roofs and cozy bay windows and polished door knockers.

The hall door was open, and filled with the servants in their state liveries; but although the door was open, the porter, as each carriage came up, rung a peal upon the knocker, to announce to all the square the successive arrival of the guests.

I've seen one of them in a sanitarium to be treated for drink who was my worst knocker, and I told him I would pray for him.

Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door.

The smith's art is shown in the fine candelabrum and in the knocker or ring-plate, perforated with Gothic design, still backed with its original morocco leather.

The bronze andirons, knockers, candlesticks, of this time have never been equalled.

She held up an ancient brass knocker, a smiling faun's head encircled in wreathing vines.

From the tiny green door she raised the burnished knocker and brought it down with an emphatic bang.

You know I am no 'knocker,' but I would rather have my 'tenner' than that slip of baby-blue paper.

The knocker used to be so bright that it shone at you, and caught your eye bewilderingly, as you came in from the street on a sunshiny day.

Melville's sore throat might have developed into diphtheria, and that Ellen had caught it, and the two women were even now lying helpless and unattended in the dark house, and he brought down the knocker on the door like a hammer.

The walls and verandah, of his house, which were of wood, glistened almost as brightly with white paint as the knocker and doorplate did with brass lacquer.

As Sir Charles finished speaking and once more turned gloomily to his neglected plate the knocker was heard again to knock, and then one of the maids approached her mistress and spoke to her in low tones.

It is a modest but a charming little red-brick house with a brass knocker and an air of unpretentious, small-scale prosperity.

A small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened to it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail.

He ran up the steps of the commodious front porch and was on the point of opening the door when some impulse he could not define made him pause and, instead of turning the knob, announce himself with a rap upon the shining brass knocker.

Since the street was busily astir with redcoat officers and men coming and going, and any squad of these might be the questioners to doubt my threadbare courier tale, I lost no time in running up the steps and hammering a peal with the heavy knocker.

She went up the front walk, between the rows of ice-coated box, and up the stone steps under the stately columned porch, and raised the knocker and let it fall with sharp impetus.

For, unlike its neighbors in the village below, this house was as white as fresh white paint could make it, at the windows hung crisply white curtains, a brass knocker dignified its broad door.

He seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if the debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his temples and ears were ringing.

All is ship-shape, from the gravel on the path to the knocker on the door, which is promptly opened, without grating of bolt or rattle of chain, by a clean, well-dressed, civil servitor.

He knocked again, and the sound of the diminutive knocker echoed prophetically amidst the stone walls; still there was no response.

While examining this doorway, notice should be taken of the ironwork of the door itself, and particularly of the sanctuary knocker.

It seemed to frown repulsively with its beetling eaves, as I lifted the knocker and let it fall with startling force.

He remembered a tradesman telling him how once he had got into great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private side door, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain the opinion of an old gentleman.

"That one," said the little anxious servant, pointing to the neatest and brightest little house you ever saw, with dazzling steps and a shining knocker, and a poor little pathetic face peering hopefully over the blind.

Then, terrified lest they should perpetrate another solo on the knocker, I rushed out and opened the door myself, just as Mrs Nash, with her face scarlet and her sleeves tucked up above the elbows, also appeared in the passage.

The knocker seemed to make the house opposite echo very strangely, as I thumped; but when the door was opened in a few minutes, everything in the hall seemed very proper and prim, while the maid who came looked as stiff and disagreeable as could be.

His hand touched the knocker irresolutely.

This done, you have only to stroll along, with the mill on your back, until you see tanbark in the street, and a knocker wrapped up in buckskin.

Now that he was about to face her, he felt convinced that she must be a cynic, who would poison the mind of Katie against him, and no power within his unfortunate body was capable of inducing him to advance and raise the knocker.

There was a small green door with a small brass plate and a small brass knocker, all of which, when opened by their attendant, a small tiger in blue, with buttons, gave admittance to a small passage that terminated in a small room.

Cried Sam, and mounting the dilapidated piazza he raised the ancient knocker of the door and used it vigorously.

As he stepped on to the porch and reached for the knocker with his left hand he recalled suddenly that his face bore strips of plaster over his wounds and that his right hand was held rigid in splints.

Its thick plank door was ornamented with a moldy brass knocker, and its four windows contained sashes, to which here and there clung a broken pane, the surviving relic of its better days.

The gunner pulled his forelock again, kicked out his left leg, and as he bobbed his head, his pigtail went up and came down again flop between his shoulders as if it were a long knocker.

At the top of a flight of immaculately white steps there was a squat little door painted green and adorned with a brass knocker burnished to the color of fine gold.

Then with common accord turned their eyes back to the street door, closed, massive, dark; the great, clear-brass knocker shining in a quiet slant of sunshine cut by a diagonal line of heavy shade filling the further end of the street.

I watched my grandmother take the antique knocker between her fingers, noting with housewifely approval that it had recently been polished.

A little later the bell rang imperatively, followed by a tattoo on the knocker.

The "oak" was open when I arrived at his chambers, and a modest flourish on the little brass knocker of the inner door was answered by my quondam teacher himself.

Cow in the barn and pig in the sty, cellar all banked up, and knocker on the front door.'

Concluding that the men were off to the war, and that the lady was the only person left at home, he turned up the sandy path and rode to the front porch, where he dismounted, and used the heavy brass knocker attached to the oaken door.

It was a true type, with sunburst window over the door, and a wonderful old knocker on the front panel of the door.

There was an outside chimney of red bricks; a pathway of red bricks in the old herringbone pattern led up to the front door, with its shining brass knocker.

I walked up to his front door, and knocked in a manner to denote with sufficient distinctiveness that the mood of the knocker was the imperative.

Losing all patience, he gropes for the knocker, and, groping in vain, begins to hammer with bare fists on the door, louder and louder, until he is interrupted by a rough voice from the railings behind him.

The drumstick seemed to have been predestined of all time to serve as a knocker.

The low door of ivory white, beautifully carved and paneled, with its mammoth brass knocker, the row of window boxes along the cornice a few feet above it, the very look of the house was an experience and an adventure to her.

Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water to scrub the steps, when the brass knocker on the door gave a thump, and she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she talked to a peddler!

Pots, pans, knockers of doors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried to the mint.

In answer to repeated summons from the ponderous knocker, shuffling footsteps were finally heard within, the door was opened a few inches and the gleaming teeth of a great, gaunt dog were thrust into the opening, followed by an ominous growling.

There was a narrow pane of beveled glass set into it near the top, beneath it a knocker that must have been hammered by a hand in some far land centuries before the house on the mesa was planned.

She heard the heavy footsteps on the path to the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither knocker nor bell, country fashion); more thumping, and then her mother's excuses, so oft repeated, so wearisome, so profitless.

This sum, which was not an inconsiderable one for those days, enabled the clergyman to rent as a parsonage the old house we have seen, with the big brazen knocker, and diamond lights in either half of its green door.

A young girl with soft brown hair and gentle eyes got out, ran to the door, and brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation.

The vestryman rattled the iron knocker on the door, which had once been painted green but had no color left now.

The only modern innovation was an electric bell, which I touched, and then, grasping the huge knocker, I rapped out an additional summons, which echoed drearily, as though through an empty house.

I hastened up the long drive, and stood before the big door, my hand upraised to the knocker.

When, after a lengthy ride, he got off in front of the palace, situated in a rather remote part of the city, bearing the two-headed eagle above the entrance, a tall, young man was just using the knocker of the gate.

I have however ordered my maid to tie up the knocker of my door in such a manner as she would do if I was really indisposed.

There have been no kickers, no knockers.

The old white door, crowned with a fanlight and retaining its brass knocker, had suffered the indignity of an electric bell, but this was obscurely placed at the side, and he lifted the knocker's lion head.

Yet in this issue of Astounding Stories he jumps on the knockers for daring to say anything against Astounding Stories!

The doors, the windows, the brass knockers, the white and chastened steps were so discreet that Sunday morning was the only time in the week when they were really comfortable and at home.

It is only when in answer to a bell, or knocker, attached to this or to an external doorway, a servant has appeared and ascertained that the visitor is an "amigo," that the door itself is opened, and access to the interior afforded.

She turned again to gaze at the heavy iron knocker, and just then a piercing animal yelp of pain or fright reached her, followed by a foul malediction in a man's rough voice.

There are antiquated houses with mossy roofs, brass knockers on the doors, which were built two hundred years ago.

The entrance door, with its ponderous brass knocker, swings back on its long strap hinges, and reveals a wide hallway which extends entirely through the house to a second door, which leads to a garden beyond.

The main door bears a ponderous knocker, and one enters a wide, dignified hallway.

Lifting the ponderous knocker, one enters the open door, passing into a broad hallway with a colonial staircase showing fine, hand-carved balusters.

Iron was at first used in the construction of knockers, partly on account of its inexpensiveness, and the results secured from this seemingly ugly material were both artistic and beautiful.

Quietly he purchased them and stored them away, awaiting the day of their revival, and his foresight was amply repaid when the modified colonial house came into vogue, demanding that the knocker should again be the doorway's chief feature.

The most elaborate knockers depict such ideas as Medusa's head, Garlands of Roses, and, in many cases, animals' heads, while the simple ones show oval or plain shapes, with border decorated with bead or fretwork.

The greatest difference noted in all these classes is that in the third type the escutcheon or plate by which the knocker is fastened to the door is of little importance, while in the first two types it is the leading motive.

During the Gothic period, the design was diamond-shape, richly decorated with pierced work, and while this same motif was retained in the making of the Renaissance knocker, it was frequently varied by the double-headed or some similar style.

The best place to purchase genuine old knockers is in the curio shops, where only such things are for sale.