knocking shop

• knocking-shop, knock shop, knock-shop

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knocking shop (plural knocking shops)

1. (chiefly Australia, Britain, New Zealand, slang) A brothel.
   • 1945, Evelyn Waugh, “Epilogue”, in Brideshead Revisited […], 3rd edition, London: Chapman & Hall, →OCLC, page 300:

     [A]lways reminds me of one of the costlier knocking-shops, you know—'Maison Japonaise' …

   • 1990, House of Cards, season 1, episode 1:

     Bloody nonsense, "All come together"... Sounds like the motto of a knocking shop in Marrakesh.

   • 2004 June 12, Vikram Dodd, “Coven's footnote to Clark diaries”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     Mr Clark, an unrepentant philanderer now gone to the knocking shop in the sky, recorded for posterity his liaisons with Valerie, Josephine and Alison Harkess.

   • 2016, Alan Moore, Jerusalem, Liveright, page 30:

     [It] had made Mick's heart soar, if only briefly, at the thought that he and Alma might outlive the monster breeze blocks that were used to smash their home ground into crack dens, knocking shops and a despairing dust that settled everywhere on people's heartstrings.