knock for a loop

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Idioms and Phrases

Also, throw for a loop ; knock down or over with a feather ; knock sideways . Overcome with surprise or astonishment, as in The news of his death knocked me for a loop , or Being fired without any warning threw me for a loop , or Jane was knocked sideways when she found out she won . The first two of these hyperbolic colloquial usages, dating from the first half of the 1900s, allude to the comic-strip image of a person pushed hard enough to roll over in the shape of a loop. The third hyperbolic term, often put as You could have knocked me down with a feather , intimating that something so light as a feather could knock one down, dates from the early 1800s; the fourth was first recorded in 1925.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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