sac

Pluralsacs

Formssacs, sacking, sacked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A pouch-like part inside a plant or animal, typically filled with fluid.

   The baby floats inside a sac of amniotic fluid until birth.

   When threatened, a squid squirts ink from a sac inside its body and darts away.

   Similarpouch

   Note

   English borrowed this word from French sac, and it is a doublet of the everyday sack: one word that reached English by two roads. The French spelling is the one used for pouches inside a living thing, as in an ink sac or the amniotic sac. The same letters also spell the gamer's clipped sacrifice and an old legal privilege, which are unrelated.

2. 2
   verbcolloquialtransitive

   In a game, to sacrifice something, such as a chess piece, giving it up deliberately in return for some gain.

   Grandmasters will sometimes sac a pawn early to seize the center.

   She won the match by saccing two creatures to power her final spell.

   Similarsacrifice

   Note

   Players clipped sacrifice down to this, and the verb now travels from chess boards to video games. Its forms come in two spellings: saccing and sacced keep the look of sac, while sacking and sacked follow its sound and collide with forms of sack, so context has to carry the meaning, as in Kasparov sacked his queen.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialtransitivecountable

   In a game, the act of giving up a piece or other resource deliberately in return for some gain.

   The commentators called his knight sac on move twelve the best idea of the tournament.

   Early sacs can pay off, but only if the attack that follows is strong enough.

   Similarsacrifice

   Note

   The thing given up usually goes in front, as in a queen sac or a knight sac, and the plural is sacs. Like the clipped verb, it belongs to players' casual talk; careful written commentary usually spells out sacrifice.

4. 4
   nounhistoricalUKuncountable

   A former manorial privilege allowing a lord to judge cases and impose fines in courts he held, surviving only in the expressions “sac and soc” and “soc and sac”.

   The charter granted the bishop sac and soc over all his estates in the county.

   But it is really the court-baron which represents the ancient assembly of the mark, while the court-leet represents the lord's jurisdiction of sac and soc, whether granted before or since the coming of William.

   1876, Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England

   Note

   The word survives only in a pair, sac and soc or soc and sac, and only in writing about the old English manor. Historians use the phrase for a grant of jurisdiction that was not always what it sounds like: sometimes it gave a lord a court of his own, but often it only entitled him to the forfeitures his men incurred in the hundred court.

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