doorknock meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

doorknock

noun

Etymology From door + knock.

Australia, New Zealand A campaign of going from house to house knocking on doors, such as for a charity appeal.

Sometimes they were raffles, mostly they were doorknocks. I went on one of the doorknocks after Wendy talked me into it.1981, Graham Jackson, Square Crib, page 98:
To run a doorknock you need volunteer collectors — lots of them. But because there are so many doorknocks each year, collectors are overloaded and it is difficult to recruit new ones. So what is the answer?1995, John Montague Gurney, N. E. Renton, Successful Clubs, page 53:

1 more example

[…] mobile phone providers have sent text messages to Victorian customers warning them of the conditions, in what has been described as an "electronic doorknock".2009 March 2, Holly Ife with AAP, “CFA and DSE warn of fires threatening Victoria, deny exaggeration”, in Herald Sun, archived from the original on 06 Mar 2009:

doorknock

verb

Etymology From door + knock.

Australia, New Zealand To participate in a campaign of going from house to house knocking on doors; to knock on the door (of a house) during such a campaign.

1979, Fatma Dharamsi, et al., Harlesden Community Project, Community Work And Caring For Children: A Community Project In An Inner City Local Authority, page 440, During the doorknocking local residents had talked about other issues.
With some exceptions, doorknocking is likely to elicit a large number of small donations but relatively few large donations.2007, Philip Hughes, Alan Black, Peter Kaldor, Building Stronger Communities, page 156:

1 more example

‘He doorknocked thirty-two thousand houses,’ Thérèse says. ‘I doorknocked with him at weekends. That′s one way to get fit, especially when every house that I doorknocked was high-set, but I took the formal period of the campaign off.’2007, Robert Macklin, Kevin Rudd: The Biography, unnumbered page:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.