sockdolager
Feb. 15th, 2011 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordsockdolager (sok-DOL-uh-jer) - n., a decisive blow or comment, finisher; an outstanding person or thing, esp. in heaviness.
Another in a continuing series of colorful 19th century American coinages, in this case from around 1830 from sock, to hit hard + possibly a variant of doxology, in the Puritan sense of the closing hymn of a church service, taken in the extended meaning of a finisher. So, the original sense is of a knockout punch.
---L.
Another in a continuing series of colorful 19th century American coinages, in this case from around 1830 from sock, to hit hard + possibly a variant of doxology, in the Puritan sense of the closing hymn of a church service, taken in the extended meaning of a finisher. So, the original sense is of a knockout punch.
---L.
