Sack

How to spell sack

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sack

What does sack mean?

1. nounA large bag made of strong material, used for carrying or storing goods.
2. verbTo dismiss someone from their employment, especially informally.
3. verbTo raid and plunder a captured town or city, carrying off its valuables.

Sack in a sentence

• noun

  He hauled the heavy sack of potatoes into the cellar.

• verb

  The manager threatened to sack anyone caught stealing stock.

• verb

  Invading troops would routinely sack a conquered city.

• noun

  The postman emptied the sack of letters onto the sorting table.

• verb

  The board voted to sack the chief executive after the scandal.

• verb

  The rebels planned to sack the wealthy port for its gold.

Where does sack come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is one of those words that has wandered across many languages while keeping almost the same sound. It traces back to the Latin saccus, meaning a 'large bag' made of coarse cloth, which Latin itself had borrowed from the Greek sakkos, a word for a bag or sackcloth. Both the Greek and Latin forms are thought to descend ultimately from a Semitic source related to the Hebrew saq, again meaning sackcloth or a coarse bag. Old English took it in early as sacc, and the everyday spelling has stayed short and blunt ever since. The figurative meanings grew naturally from the literal bag: to 'sack' a city came from the old practice of soldiers carrying off plunder in sacks, while 'getting the sack' from a job comes from the idea of a dismissed worker collecting his tools in a bag and taking them home.

How the word is built

• sack (single root, from Latin saccus 'bag', via Old English sacc)

Words that sound like sack

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• sac: A pouch or baglike membranous cavity in a living organism, often containing fluid or air.