Stockings

How to spell stockings

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stockings

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stockings mean?

1. nounClose-fitting coverings for the feet and legs, usually made of fine knitted fabric or nylon.

Stockings in a sentence

• She packed several pairs of silk stockings for the trip.

• The dancers wore black stockings under their costumes.

Where does stockings come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word stocking grows out of the Old English stocc, which literally meant a stump, log, or post. By the medieval period the related sense had narrowed to coverings for the lower leg, perhaps because such hose looked like sheaths slipped over the leg as a covering is slipped over a post. The form 'nether-stocks' was once used for the lower leg-coverings as opposed to the upper 'upper-stocks', and over time the shortened 'stocking' won out, first recorded in the sixteenth century. The familiar plural simply adds -s, since these garments come in pairs. The same stocc root survives in the modern word 'stock', and the spelling trap is mostly the silent doubling and the -ing cluster rather than anything exotic.

How the word is built

• stock (from Old English stocc: stump, post; later applied to a covering for the leg)
• -ing (forming a noun)
• -s (plural)