doorknock

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   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.
   • 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?
   • […] mobile phone providers have sent text messages to Victorian customers warning them of the conditions, in what has been described as an "electronic doorknock".
2. 2

   To participate in a campaign of going from house to house knocking on doors

   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.
   • ‘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.’

The neighborhood