sock
1 Americannoun
-
socks,
plural
-
sox
plural
-
a short stocking usually reaching to the calf or just above the ankle.
-
a lightweight shoe worn by ancient Greek and Roman comic actors.
-
comic writing for the theater; comedy or comic drama.
-
Furniture. a raised vertical area of a club or pad foot.
idioms
verb (used with object)
-
socks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
socked,
past participle, past
-
socking
present participle
noun
-
a hard blow.
-
a very successful show, performance, actor, etc..
The show was a sock.
adjective
verb phrase
-
sock in to close or ground because of adverse weather conditions.
The airport was socked in.
-
sock away to put into savings or reserve.
noun
-
a cloth covering for the foot, reaching to between the ankle and knee and worn inside a shoe
-
an insole put in a shoe, as to make it fit better
-
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
-
another name for windsock
-
informal to make a determined effort, esp in order to regain control of a situation
-
slang be quiet!
verb
-
(tr) to provide with socks
-
slang (of an airport) closed by adverse weather conditions
verb
-
(usually tr) to hit with force
-
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
-
socksimple
-
sockssimple
-
have sockedperfect
-
has sockedperfect
-
am sockingprogressive
-
are sockingprogressive
-
is sockingprogressive
-
have been sockingperfect progressive
-
has been sockingperfect progressive
Past
-
sockedsimple
-
had sockedperfect
-
was sockingprogressive
-
were sockingprogressive
-
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:
Stokes came to the post-match media conference with blood seeping through his sock.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
Higher borrowing costs would sock it to home buyers, heavy credit-card users and anyone needing a loan.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026
Benchmark U.S. natural-gas futures are trading about 10% below year-ago levels thanks to strong domestic production and comfortable spring weather that enabled traders to sock away fuel in storage caverns.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 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
Standing at the checkout counter with an armload of sock monkeys, I told the cashier, "These are for a piece I'm working on. It's a performance commissioned by the art museum. I'm an artist."
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
As insurance, I tuck my shirt in, pull my socks over my pant legs, and wear ankle-covering gaiters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
I asked Muse to buy socks every three weeks and it was like, OK, just let me access your data.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
The story, as it were, centers on a woman named Lisa Blupey, portrayed by stage veteran Jessica Vosk, who runs a small business selling socks but is drowning in financial statements and malfunctioning A.I.-powered platforms.
From Slate ● Oct. 1, 2026
They were J.Crew socks: tiny lobsters, reindeer, tasteful little acts of rebellion occurring mostly below the trouser cuff.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026
On tables between them were piles of woolen socks in army gray.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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
“They’ve got a couple of big hits the last couple of nights,” said Red sox catcher A.J.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 5, 2014
"You bet your sox," yelled the strange voice, in chorus with other shouts of approval.
From The Sky Pilot, a Tale of the Foothills by Ralph Connor
Vietnamese savers have socked away around 400 tonnes of the precious metal at home, according to government auditors.
From Barron's ● Jan. 30, 2026
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
The Angels, as a whole, socked 19 home runs across the eight-game stretch — the power appeared to help them surge to third place in a division more than up for grabs.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 25, 2025
The Mariners catcher will forever be a part of team lore thanks to the walkoff homer he socked two Septembers ago to end Seattle’s playoff drought.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 5, 2024
The woman, her head forward and bent, suddenly padded out from her back rooms in thickly socked feet and stood waiting for me, silent.
From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee
The first five years of retirement can be crucial as you transition from getting a regular paycheck and socking away money to actually spending some of your hard-earned savings.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 9, 2026
The country has been buying barrels far in excess of its domestic needs over the past year and socking them away in storage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 12, 2026
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.
