sock
1 Americannoun
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a short stocking usually reaching to the calf or just above the ankle.
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a lightweight shoe worn by ancient Greek and Roman comic actors.
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comic writing for the theater; comedy or comic drama.
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Furniture. a raised vertical area of a club or pad foot.
idioms
verb (used with object)
noun
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a hard blow.
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a very successful show, performance, actor, etc..
The show was a sock.
adjective
verb phrase
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sock in to close or ground because of adverse weather conditions.
The airport was socked in.
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sock away to put into savings or reserve.
noun
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a cloth covering for the foot, reaching to between the ankle and knee and worn inside a shoe
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an insole put in a shoe, as to make it fit better
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a light shoe worn by actors in ancient Greek and Roman comedy, sometimes taken to allude to comic drama in general (as in the phrase sock and buskin ) See buskin
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another name for windsock
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informal to make a determined effort, esp in order to regain control of a situation
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slang be quiet!
verb
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(tr) to provide with socks
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slang (of an airport) closed by adverse weather conditions
verb
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(usually tr) to hit with force
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to make a forceful impression on
noun
Usage
What is a basic definition of sock? A sock is a piece of clothing worn on the foot that usually extends to around the ankle. As a verb, sock means to hit hard. The word sock has a few other senses as a noun and an adjective. A sock is worn on the foot and is almost always made of cloth, such as cotton or wool. It usually covers the entire foot and stretches to around the ankle but may sometimes extend higher. Socks are almost always made or sold in pairs, in order to cover both feet. The plural of sock is socks or, rarely, sox. Sox rarely appears in formal writing with two exceptions: The names of the American baseball teams the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox (Go Sox!).
- Real-life examples: You are probably wearing a pair of socks right now. Soccer players wear knee-high socks. Most people don’t wear socks while wearing sandals.
- Used in a sentence: Whenever I do laundry, I somehow end up with a leftover sock.
- Used in a sentence: I watched as the boxer was socked right in the jaw and fell down.
- Used in a sentence: After the boxer got a sock in the jaw, he fell down.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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socksimple
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sockssimple
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have sockedperfect
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has sockedperfect
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am sockingprogressive
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are sockingprogressive
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is sockingprogressive
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have been sockingperfect progressive
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has been sockingperfect progressive
Past
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sockedsimple
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had sockedperfect
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was sockingprogressive
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were sockingprogressive
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had been sockingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sock1
First recorded before 900; Middle English sok, socke, Old English socc “light shoe, slipper, stocking,” from Latin soccus
Origin of sock2
First recorded in 1690–1700; origin uncertain
Explanation
A sock is a piece of clothing you wear on your foot, under your shoe, and socks usually come in pairs. You can wear only one sock if you like, but your other foot might get jealous. Some socks barely cover the foot, while others reach up over the knee. When you sock someone, it has nothing to do with footwear; you punch them. If something "knocks your socks off," it makes you extremely enthusiastic or excited, and if your brother tells you to "put a sock in it," he means "be quiet."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If you’re a fan of Croatia, I think you might want to stop reading here and go do something less stressful, like operating a jackhammer, or wrestling a sock drawer full of cobras.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
Wearing a handmade sock puppet with large googly eyes she found at Walmart, Esquivel read “Snuggle Puppy!” in a high-pitched voice as her teenage daughter recorded.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
Asked whether he would indeed be the president's sock puppet, Warsh said: "Absolutely not."
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2026
More places to sock away fuels “could be a game-changer for Asian countries.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 15, 2026
As I said this, I wet my sock so I wasn’t lying.
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
The stakes are certainly higher than misplaced socks.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 6, 2026
Bad news if you fancy a £9.50 pair of socks with the Duke on them though, those are sold out.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026
These giant pants had these huge pockets in them, and I would put a big, gallon Ziploc bag with a clean T-shirt and clean socks inside the pant pocket.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
But over the years, the mushy yellow-brown legumes "became an acquired taste like a strong cheese can, because you know how cheese can smell like dirty socks," the 47-year-old Arizonan said.
From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026
I go for the door—my now-drenched socks nearly slipping on the wet ground—but the akrafena whooshes over my head and comes to a stop in front of me.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
It was the first time a Yankee starter allowed four homers since James Paxton on July 26, 2019, at Fenway Park against the Boston Red sox.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 2, 2021
On August 18, 2017, a new age in astronomy dawned, appropriately, with a tweet: “New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!”
From Scientific American ● Aug. 21, 2019
On 18 August, astronomer J. Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas at Austin began the public rumour mill when he tweeted, “New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!”
From Nature ● Aug. 23, 2017
He confessed in 1951 about the overload, “Two drawers are full, so I’m moving my sox over.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2015
Why not sox without feet and pants without legs.
From Dere Mable Love Letters of a Rookie by Breck, G. William
Winter storm Fern, which socked the Midwest and Northeast, likely boosted the number of claims filed.
From Barron's ● Feb. 5, 2026
She also opened a brokerage account and socked away the money from her pandemic- stimulus check.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2025
He had over $270,000 socked away at Bank of America in three accounts—all getting closed by the bank—including one for his charity that supports churches and orphanages in Uganda.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2025
CJ Abrams socked a two-run home run in the seventh off Dodgers reliever Jack Dreyer, his second in as many games.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2025
If knowledge is so dangerous, why does Nyla have others ready to be used socked away here?
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
You say you don’t have any money saved, but when you start socking away funds — which you should do as soon as possible — I’d recommend getting a high-yield savings account.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 12, 2026
But rather than freeing up more room in our monthly budget, I proposed taking the difference and socking it away in savings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025
Lenders in countries as far away as Germany and Japan are socking away hundreds of millions of dollars in anticipation of loans going bad.
From BBC ● Mar. 9, 2024
The first issue of Captain America featured Cap socking Adolf Hitler in the jaw, some nine months before the U.S. entered WWII.
From Salon ● Jan. 24, 2024
The snow came down with hard gusts, socking the sides of the pickup and blotting out the windshield.
From "Orbiting Jupiter" by Gary D. Schmidt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
