Where ginger is to move “gingerly” i.e. cautiously or carefully. Can’t comment on how valid that is but that website says the term has been in use since the 19th century.
Hmm… That didn’t seem right to me, so I looked it up
The “knock, knock, ginger” is linked to a 1967 Childhood in Poetry book by John Mackay Shaw. Behold these glorious verses:
Ginger, Ginger broke a winder,
Hit the winda—crack!
The baker came out to give ‘im a clout,
And landed on his back.
However, we’ve also seen the game called knock down ginger.
This may actually be more accurate, as “knock down” is a term dating to the late 18th century. It refers to knocking on a door by pulling the door knock striker.
Plus, ginger was a common term then as it meant to “ginger up” (move smartly). So, knock the door, leg it in timely fashion.
Likely some casual irish racism in a similar vein to the Southern US calling it n* knocking, although in my town no one ever called it that, it was ding dong ditching
As someone who grew up down south in the UK, it’s “knock down ginger”
I have no idea who ginger is and what they have to do with prank knocking
Also from southern UK and we called it knock down ginger. Looked it up and found this:
https://idiomorigins.org/origin/knock-down-ginger
Where ginger is to move “gingerly” i.e. cautiously or carefully. Can’t comment on how valid that is but that website says the term has been in use since the 19th century.
If you rearrange some of the letters in ginger you get the hate crime version of the name from the US South.
Hmm… That didn’t seem right to me, so I looked it up
https://professionalmoron.com/2022/04/18/history-of-knock-knock-ginger/
That feels a bit more like it to me, though surprised it’s not even a century old, I figured it was Victorian
Yeah a poem about whipping gingers on the back. From 1967.
Uh… Who is going to tell him?
I’m from pretty much bang centre of the UK and we called it Postman’s Knock.
Do you want to know why? Well I’ve no fucking idea. My brother called it that so I called it that.
We called it “Knock a Door Ginger”. Like you, never understood the Ginger significance
Likely some casual irish racism in a similar vein to the Southern US calling it n* knocking, although in my town no one ever called it that, it was ding dong ditching