If you went to school in the 50s and 60s, knackers also had another, less polite application related to the male genital area. It was often used to refer to a particularly painful knock in sport if a ball hit below the belt. It protected the knackers from harm, although not altogether from pain, depending on the speed of the errant cricket ball. Even today, some people look at me a second longer than necessary if I make an honest attempt to pronounce Māori place-names accurately. It's simple, he said: "Think of your toe and then the word 'poor', put them together, and you have Taupo."

Source: Stuff April 18, 2019 02:26 UTC