Green’s Dictionary of Slang

completely, utterly; esp. in phr. beat or knock hollow, to trounce completely.

1668–71		Skinner Etymol. Ling. Angl. n.p.: He carried it Hollow, Luculenter Vicit vel Superavit, credo dictum quasi ‘he carried it wholy’ [OED].
1759		J. Townley High Life Below Stairs I ii: Crab was beat hollow, Careless threw his rider.
1762		Foote Orators in Works (1799) I 193: Foote. You succeeded? Suds. [...] Yes, yes, I got it all hollow.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 282: I’ll give his jacket to apollo / For helping me to beat him hollow.
1786		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Farewell Odes’ Works (1794) I 185: I’m greatly pleas’d [...] To see foreigners beat hollow.
1794		W. Godwin Caleb Williams (1966) 44: Oh, yes, he had it all hollow!
1814		in Ebsworth Patronage Ch. iii: Squire Burton won the match hollow [F&H].
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 83: There was a most excellent mill at Moulsey Hurst on Thursday last, between the Gas-light man, who appears to be a game chicken, and a prime hammerer — he can give and take with any man — and Oliver — Gas beat him hollow, it was all Lombard-street to a china orange.
1838		T. Haliburton Clockmaker II 170: Well, says I, Jack, your foot is a whopper, that’s a fact [...] it beats Gasper Zwicher’s all holler.
1840		R. Barham ‘Bloudie Jacke’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1842) 174: His lines on Apollo / Beat all the rest hollow, / And gained him the Newdigate prize.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes III 23: The dust and mosquitos of this country beat hollow those of America.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 609: To beat all hollow, an old English phrase, may be derived from the idea of beating so as to leave the victim literally hollow, without strength, as Webster suggests; but there is at least as strong probability that it may have been originally wholly, which was afterward corrupted into hollow.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Oct. 8/3: Dave Hayman, manager and lessee of the Opera House, can, for pomposity, self-confldence, and verbosity, lick Dave Buchanan hollow.
1886		M.E. Braddon Mohawks III 257: There is a true British smack about a glass of ale that beats your foreign wines hollow.
1892		Kipling ‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy’ in Barrack-Room Ballads (1893) 151: But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ’oller.
1902		A.N. Lyons Hookey 88: ’Ow anybody as ’as got enough good manners to clean ’is teeth of a mornin’ can go an’ get filthy drunk in the evenin’ knocks me ’oller.
1908		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 July 14/3: Now that we know him, we find that, even in the matter of his own alleged virtues, the local product can beat him hollow.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 67: Why, that beats hooking signs all hollow.
1915		Wodehouse Psmith Journalist (1993) 267: This beats ozone hollow!
1941		G. Kersh They Die with Their Boots Clean 77: I want you to do me a personal favour. I want you to beat them Things hollow.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 18: A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.