Sock

How to spell sock

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sock

What does sock mean?

1. nounA soft knitted covering for the foot, worn inside a shoe.
2. verbTo strike someone or something hard, especially with the fist (informal).

Sock in a sentence

• noun

  He pulled a warm wool sock over his cold foot.

• verb

  The boxer threatened to sock his opponent in the first round.

• noun

  One sock always seems to vanish in the wash.

• verb

  A sudden gust could sock the loose tent flat against the ground.

Where does sock come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English socc, meaning a light slipper or low shoe, which was itself borrowed from the Latin soccus, the name for a soft, low-heeled shoe worn by comic actors on the Roman stage. The Latin word probably entered Latin from Greek sykchos, a kind of slipper, so the trail runs from Greek through Latin into early English. Over the centuries the sense slid from a flexible shoe to the soft cloth covering we now pull on under our shoes. The informal verb meaning to hit hard appeared in English around the early 1700s and is of uncertain origin, which is why the punchy expression to sock someone feels separate from the foot garment. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, the chief thing to remember is the doubled letters do not appear: it is simply s, o, c, k.

How the word is built

• sock (single root, from Old English socc: a light slipper or covering for the foot)