knock v.

c. 1600, probably a variant of knurled, from Middle English knar "knob, knot in wood, protruding mass on a tree" (late 14c.), earlier "a crag, rugged rock or stone" (early 13c.), from a general group of Germanic words that includes English knob, knock, knuckle, knoll, knurl. Gnarl (v.) "make knotty," gnarl (n.) "a knotty growth on wood," and gnarly (adj.) all seem to owe their existence in modern English to Shakespeare's use of gnarled in 1603:

[T]hy sharpe and sulpherous bolt Splits the vn-wedgable and gnarled Oke. ["Measure for Measure," II.ii.116]

"(Gnarled) occurs in one passage of Shakes. (for which the sole authority is the folio of 1623), whence it came into general use in the nineteenth century" [OED].

1660s, "arouse by knocking at the door," from knock (v.) + up (adv.). However it is little used in this sense in American English, where the phrase means "get a woman pregnant" (1813, in a New Jersey context), possibly ultimately from knock in a sense "to copulate with" (1590s; compare slang knocking-shop "brothel," 1860). To knock up also meant "to knock unconscious" in early 19c.

Knocked up in the United States, amongst females, the phrase is equivalent to being enciente, so that Englishmen often unconsciously commit themselves when amongst our Yankee cousins. [John Camden Hotten, "The Slang Dictionary," London, 1860]

Also "to exhaust, overcome or make ill with fatigue" (1737).