"In the end, the fight between Sony and Toshiba played out like some kind of bizarro sports movie," writes Josh Levin. "The bad guy won at the end by clocking the lovable underdog in the crotch with a baseball bat." I have no real opinion on the DVD format wars, but can you use the verb "clocking" in that context? I've always thought of it as describing a single punch that ends a fight, or lays out an opponent. I'm not sure why I thought this, so I looked it up. The dictionary has a definition of "clock" that goes "clean (someone's) clock, Slang; To beat or defeat decisively." That wouldn't seem to exclude Levin's usage here, but somehow I still don't think you can clock someone in the crotch with a baseball bat. What say you, persnickety word geeks of the internet?
