Stocked

How to spell stocked

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stocked

What does stocked mean?

1. verbPast tense of stock: filled or supplied a place with a store of goods or items.
2. adjectiveHolding a supply of goods or items, usually paired with a word like well or fully.

Stocked in a sentence

• verb

  The shop stocked extra batteries before the holiday rush.

• adjective

  The well-stocked library impressed every visiting researcher.

• verb

  She stocked the pantry with tinned food ahead of the storm.

• adjective

  A fully stocked first aid kit hung beside the workshop door.

Where does stocked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'stock', which traces back to the Old English noun stocc, meaning a tree trunk, stump, or log. That same wooden sense survives in words like 'stockade' and in the old punishment device called 'the stocks', built from heavy timber. Over the centuries the idea drifted from a solid post to a fixed store of something, and by the late medieval period 'stock' meant a supply or hoard kept in reserve, including livestock and the goods held by a merchant. The verb 'to stock', meaning to furnish or supply with a store of goods, grew out of that commercial sense, and the regular past form 'stocked' followed naturally. Because the root is a short Germanic word ending in a hard consonant, the only spelling point to watch is that the final sound, said as a 't', is still written with the regular '-ed' ending.

How the word is built

• stock (from Old English stocc: tree trunk, store, supply)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)