It’s nearly Christmas already, and Secret Santa has been a topic of conversation at work – we were discussing what would be the perfect present? Christian said he always asks for socks for Christmas but nobody gets them for him. LOL! When you’re a kid socks are the most disappointing present ever, but when you grow up a nice new, warm pair of socks (matching, sans toe holes!) can be just the ticket – a simple pleasure and practical. Apparently, socks are among the the most needed but the least donated items to homeless shelters. So take Jay’s lead and get donating socks to Sock Mob (www.meetup.com/thesockmob/).
Where did we get the humble word socks from, I wondered. It comes from the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) word socc, which meant “light slipper”. Old English was brought to England, possibly in the mid-400s, by Germanic speaking Anglo-Saxons. Interestingly, they borrowed socc from Latin soccus, which was a “light, low-heeled shoe” worn by Roman comic actors, and came from the Ancient Greek word sykchos, “a kind of shoe”.
Another hosiery-related Christmas word is stocking (woollen, not the nylon variety). Being longer than socks, covering the leg up to the knee or higher, they can, importantly, hold more presents.
Although the words sock and stocking look similar they have different roots. Stocking comes from stocken, the plural of stock, meaning “leg covering” or “cover with material”, which was used back in the 400s. Stock also referred to the bottom lower trunk and limbs of the body. Stock as in “leg covering” came from from Old English stocu “sleeve,” related to Old English stocc “trunk, log”.
Sources:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sock
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sock
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sock
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English
https://www.etymonline.com/word/stocking
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/stocking
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/stocking
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocking
That Word... where's it come from? 