It has only been 300 years since Issac Newton discovered that an apple, if it becomes detached from the tree, falls to the ground, though we may reasonably suppose that generations of apple-knockers had known this all along.
I said, ‘I'm just an apple knocker from Arkansas.’
He hopped freight trains out West and worked in the orchards of Washington state as an ‘apple knocker’, dug potatoes in the Oregon's Clamitt Valley, picked peaches and harvested vegetable crops in the Willamette Valley, and then moved down into California's central valley working the rice, cotton, and olive harvests.
1.1derogatory An ignorant or unsophisticated person.
〈贬〉粗鲁的人；不懂人情世故的人
maybe a hundred men, apple-knockers mostly
Example sentencesExamples
The crowd was about...one-third rednecksI mean real apple-knockers.
Locals mocked McAdoo's followers as apple knockers and mimicked their drawls.
The apple-knockers have been transgressing all bounds of decency by looting national wealth.