/stɒk/, /stɑk/
OriginFrom Middle English stok, from Old English stocc, from Proto-West Germanic *stokk, from Proto-Germanic *stukkaz (“tree-trunk”).
Modern senses are mostly referring either to the trunk from which the tree grows (figuratively, its origin and/or support/foundation), or to a piece of wood, stick, or rod. The senses of "supply" and "raw material" arose from a probable conflation with steck (“an item of goods, merchandise”) or the use of split tally sticks consisting of foil or counterfoil and stock to capture paid taxes, debts or exchanges. Doublet of chock.
- countable, uncountableA store or supply.
- countable, uncountableA store of goods ready for sale; inventory.
“We have a stock of televisions on hand.”
“I checked in the back of the stockroom and found some more stock.”
- countable, uncountableA supply of anything, stored until used; especially, such a supply that is ready for use.
“Lay in a stock of wood for the winter season.”
- countable, uncountableRailroad rolling stock.
“The Grand Trunk Railway had just purchased a large order of stock from the American Car and Foundry Company.”
- countable, uncountableA stack of undealt cards made available to the players.
- countable, uncountableFarm or ranch animals; livestock.
“Good ranchers must continually keep watch over the health of their stock.”
“[…] the open land is generally covered by a grass which grows in tussacs, and produces tufts of hard, crisp, pointed blades. Stock will never willingly eat this grass; […]”
- countable, uncountableThe population of a given type of animal (especially fish) available to be captured from the wild for economic use.
“The stocks of this fishery are recovering from overfishing, but the gains can easily reverse if our husbandry efforts lapse.”
- countable, uncountableThe capital raised by a company through the issue of shares; the total of shares held by an individual shareholder.
“His grandpa had bought some stock in General Electric in 1905, and he refused to sell it ever after.”
- countable, uncountableThe price or value of the stock of a company on the stock market.
“When the bad news came out, the company's stock dropped precipitously.”
- US, countable, especially, uncountableA share in a company.
- countable, figuratively, uncountableThe measure of how highly a person or institution is valued.
“After that last screw-up of mine, my stock is pretty low around here.”
“With his stock rising fast in the party, the governor has conspicuously refrained from saying he would stand aside if Mr. Trump runs for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.”
- countable, uncountableAny of several types of security that are similar to a stock, or marketed like one.
- countable, uncountableBroth made from meat (originally bones) or vegetables, used as a basis for stew or soup.
“They make beef stock from the butchery scraps that they otherwise might not have used.”
- countable, uncountableThe type of paper used in printing.
“The books were printed on a heavier stock this year.”
- abbreviation, alt-of, countable, ellipsis, uncountableEllipsis of film stock.
- countable, uncountablePlain soap before it is coloured and perfumed.
- countable, uncountableStock theater, summer stock theater.
- countable, uncountableThe trunk and woody main stems or limbs of a tree; the base from which something grows or branches.
“Though the roote thereof waxe old in the earth, and the stocke thereof die in the ground: Yet through the sent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughes like a plant.”
- countable, uncountableThe plant upon which the scion is grafted.
“The cion overruleth the stock quite.”
- broadly, countable, uncountableLineage; family; ancestry.
“UUhat, ſhall I call thee brother? No, a foe,
Monſter of Nature, ſhame vnto thy ſtocke,
That darſt preſume thy Soueraigne for to mocke.”
“His hatred is not based upon whom these people are (like many rightwing Republicans, Gallo comes from immigrant stock), but how easily these people have come by success in America.”
“We may also conclude that as it was the Ionic γένη of the Attic tetrapolis who in the main achieved the Ionization of Athens, so it was a branch of this same stock that settled at Delos […]”
- broadly, countable, uncountableA larger grouping of language families: a superfamily or macrofamily.
- countable, uncountableAny of the several species of cruciferous flowers in the genus Matthiola.
- countable, uncountableThe part of a rifle or shotgun that rests against the shooter's shoulder.
“The most underrated component in building a custom gun is the metalsmithing. Stock work immediately attracts attention. Fancy checkering patterns, meticulously executed, are sure to elicit oohs and ah”
- countable, uncountableThe handle of a whip, fishing rod, etc.
- countable, uncountableThe headstock of a lathe, drill, etc.
- countable, uncountableThe tailstock of a lathe.
- countable, uncountableA ski pole.
- countable, uncountableA bar going through an anchor, perpendicular to the flukes.
“The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms, the shank. All this, according to the jou”
- countable, uncountableThe axle attached to the rudder, which transfers the movement of the helm to the rudder.
- countable, uncountableA pipe (vertical cylinder of ore)
- countable, uncountableA necktie or cravat, particularly a wide necktie popular in the eighteenth century, often seen today as a part of formal wear for horse riding competitions.
“He wore a brown tweed suit and a white stock. His clothes hung loosely about him as though they had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a respectable farmer of the middle of the nineteenth”
“His grey waistcoat sported pearl buttons, and he wore a stock which set off to admiration a lean and aquiline face which was almost as grey as the rest of him.”
- countable, uncountableA piece of black cloth worn under a clerical collar.
- countable, uncountableA bed for infants; a crib, cot, or cradle
- countable, uncountableA piece of wood magically made to be just like a real baby and substituted for it by magical beings.
- countable, obsolete, uncountableA cover for the legs; a stocking.
- countable, uncountableA block of wood; something fixed and solid; a pillar; a firm support; a post.
“When all our Fathers worſhip't Stocks and Stones,”
“Item, for a stock of brass for the holy water, seven shillings; which, by the canon, must be of marble or metal, and in no case of brick.”
- broadly, countable, obsolete, uncountableA person who is as dull and lifeless as a stock or post; one who has little sense.
“Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks.”
- UK, countable, historical, uncountableThe longest part of a split tally stick formerly struck in the exchequer, which was delivered to the person who had lent the king money on account, as the evidence of indebtedness.
- countable, in-plural, uncountableThe frame or timbers on which a ship rests during construction.
- UK, countable, in-plural, uncountableRed and grey bricks, used for the exterior of walls and the front of buildings.
- countable, uncountableIn tectology, an aggregate or colony of individuals, such as trees, chains of salpae, etc.
- countable, uncountableThe beater of a fulling mill.
“[…]a somewhat rude machine called the stocks, and consisting of a pair of wooden mallets, worked alternately by a cog wheel.”
- A thrust with a rapier; a stoccado.
- To have on hand for sale.
“The store stocks all kinds of dried vegetables.”
“...he would not stock any product on his shelves from any company that hired a communist or, as it was called at the time, a comsymp.”
- To provide with material requisites; to store; to fill; to supply.
“to stock a warehouse with goods”
“to stock a farm, i.e. to supply it with cattle and tools”
“to stock land, i.e. to occupy it with a permanent growth, especially of grass”
- To allow (cows) to retain milk for twenty-four hours or more prior to sale.
- To put in the stocks as punishment.
“Poor Tom, that[…]eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipp'd from tything to tything, and stock'd, punish'd, and im”
- To fit (an anchor) with a stock, or to fasten the stock firmly in place.
- datedTo arrange cards in a certain manner for cheating purposes; to stack the deck.
- not-comparableOf a type normally available for purchase/in stock.
“stock items”
“stock sizes”
- not-comparableHaving the same configuration as cars sold to the non-racing public, or having been modified from such a car.
- not-comparableStraightforward, ordinary, just another, very basic.
“He gave me a stock answer.”
- countable, uncountableA village and civil parish in Chelmsford district, Essex, England, United Kingdom (OS grid ref TQ6998).
- countable, uncountableA surname.
“Speaking on the John Solomon Reports podcast this week, conservative activist and RiftTV contributor Sarah Stock attributed some of the divide to a generational split in how conservatives consume info”
- countable, diminutive, form-of, uncountableDiminutive of Stockton (“personal name”).
Formsstocks(plural) · stocken(obsolete, plural) · stocks(present, singular, third-person) · stocking(participle, present) · stocked(participle, past) · stocked(past) · Stocks(plural)