"knock up"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Remember, Adam and Eve were described as "a swinging couple" (see  List Archives).

About the only sense that makes sense to me in context would be something like "knock down," "discredit," etc.

JL



"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: "knock up"
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>Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:09:16 -0400
>Reply-To: 18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion
>Sender: 18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion
>From: nancy mayer
>Subject: [C18-L] Byron on the origin of the world
>To: C18-L at LISTS.PSU.EDU
>
>McGann's Byron's Major Works. p.1017
> From Byron's random notes
>101
>If according to some speculations-- you could prove the World many
>thousand years older than the Mosaic Chronology -- or if you
>could knock up Adam & Eve and the Apple & Serpent-- still what is
>to be put up in their stead? -- or how is the difficulty
>removed? things must have had a beginning --and what matters it
>when--or how?--- I sometimes think that Man may be a
>relic of some higher material being wrecked in a former world--
>and degenerated in the hardships and struggles through Chaos into
>Conformity-- or something like it--- we see it in the Laplanders--
>Esquimaux--etc.- inferior in the present state-- as the
>Elements become more inexorable---- but even then this
>higher pre-Adamite Supposititious Creation must have had an
>Origin and a Creator for a Creator is a more natural
>imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms-- all
>things remount to a fountain-- though they may flow to an ocean.

Bisexual in the Garden of Eden?

The closest sense I find is OED2 18.f. To arouse by knocking at the
door. But there weren't any doors in Eden?


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