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As someone who has lived most of his life south of a line drawn from The Severn to The Wash - the great linguistic and cultural divide in England - I was not familiar with the expression knocking on.

My grandson and his friends in Manchester will ask their mums if they can go and knock on for Jack, or report "Ahmed is knocking on for me". Or sometimes they simply just go knocking on for all and sundry. It means that they are going, sometimes from door to door to see if their friends are available to come and play.

So having identified it to Lancashire, where else do they knock on?

WS2
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    I suspect it's a latter-day "pseudo-traditional" usage. I just Googled "knock on for your mates", and the vast majority seem to be very recent postings on Twitter (and two out of the three instances of "knock on for my mates" are simply responses to earlier tweets as above). So I think it's Internet, not "regional" slang. – FumbleFingers May 18 '16 at 17:06
  • @FumbleFingers How interesting! So they may be saying it in Bognor Regis too! I would have sworn it was northern! – WS2 May 18 '16 at 17:12
  • My father's from Lancashire, and I've got family/friends in Manchester, so I'd expect to be already aware of the usage if it were "traditional/regional". But also note OP's example *Ahmed is knocking on for me*, which again suggests a very new usage likely to have arisen in the rather unusual context of "multicultural street talk" where there's no clearly-defined pre-existing dominant linguistic "sub-culture" (so the kids are more free to create their own new forms). – FumbleFingers May 18 '16 at 17:20
  • @FumbleFingers I think you are probably right about it being a form of newspeak, but I don't accept the argument aboyt Ahmed at all. As you know, wherever Asian or Caribbean descended kids are found anywhere in the UK, they are speaking the local dialect to perfection. Danny Welbeck, and Marcus Rashford are as Mancunian as tripe and onions. – WS2 May 18 '16 at 17:59
  • I've wondered where this came from, too. It's prevalent around here now (south of Manchester) but seems to only have appeared in the last 10? years or so. Never heard it when I was growing up, in the same area. – peterG May 18 '16 at 18:05
  • Not in Yorkshire or the West of Scotland. – David May 18 '16 at 18:27
  • @FumbleFingers So far the only hard evidence we are getting is South Manchester and environs. – WS2 May 19 '16 at 08:48
  • @WS2: I'm in no position to cite "authoritative research" backing me up, but I'd have thought the regional dialectal usages of second-generation immigrants are bound to be somewhat different to the "local mainstream". They'll mostly pick up the same usages as their (age-based) peer group, but because their parents (and grandparents, if also around) don't speak the local dialect naturally, they'll have limited exposure to many older (i.e. - "traditional" usages). Whatever - I still think this one is a new form, not long-established regional dialect. – FumbleFingers May 19 '16 at 12:58
  • @FumbleFingers Conveniently, grandson now lives south of Birmingham, and I'm seeing him tomorrow. So I will ask if his current mates talk about knocking on. My guess is they don't, but let's see. – WS2 May 19 '16 at 19:03
  • @WS2: I'd be interested to hear how that goes. If he does know the usage, ask him if he thinks of it as a reduced version of knock on [his door] for your mate, or something else entirely. Also see if he's familiar with knock up* your mates* (which I'm still supposing is - or at least was - common throughout the land). – FumbleFingers May 20 '16 at 13:58
  • @FumbleFingers OK will keep you posted. To me, a knock up was an early-morning call, or at least one that involved getting someone out of bed at an unsocial hour. – WS2 May 20 '16 at 15:34
  • @WS2: I've always been happy to knock up so-and-so at any time of day, even if the only vertical movement involved is so-and-so shifting his ass up off the tv sofa to come and answer the door. – FumbleFingers May 20 '16 at 15:40
  • @FumbleFingers Well, when asked Manchester- born boy said, 'yes they say it around (Solihull) too'. However after a bit more examination it was clear that it was not as frequently used. More questioning revealed that the person who had said it could possibly have been imitating him. He was not sure if it was a reduced version of 'knocking on his door'. So I fear we are not much further forward. I still rather doubt you would hear it in Tunbridge Wells. – WS2 May 20 '16 at 17:59
  • @WS2: True - I'm sure if Disgusted had heard it in his own backyard there'd be letters to The Times and questions raised in the House. Whatever next? (Innit? :) – FumbleFingers May 20 '16 at 18:13
  • @Funny you should say "his". I had always thought of D of TW as female. Indeed she and Mary Whitehouse share a sort of amorphous compartment in my mind. – WS2 May 20 '16 at 18:28

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I'm from a yorkshire village. We've said 'knock on' since we were kids and i'm old now.

As in

Lets knock on our jen's door to see if she's lecking out.

KillingTime
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Unladylike Artisan
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    Welcome to ELU. Isn't that merely a verb+preposition since it has an object ("our Jen's door"), rather than the phrasal verb knock on ("Let's knock on for Jen"). The verb+preposition is not dialectal at all. It may be that you do use "Let's knock on for Jen," in which case please do update the answer to reflect that. – Andrew Leach Jun 16 '23 at 10:15