stocking

Pluralstockings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A soft knit or woven garment worn on the foot and lower leg beneath shoes or other footwear.

   The dancer rolled a silk stocking up to her knee before the performance.

   Sheer stockings were once a staple of formal dress.

   Similarnylons, hose

   Note

   The garment the other noun senses borrow their shape from. It joins stock, in the sense "cover with material," to -ing, and that ending hides an old plural in -en: stocken was once the plural, later heard as a singular. In everyday use stockings are counted in pairs, as in a pair of stockings, like other things worn on both legs.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A large, sock-like bag for holding small Christmas gifts, usually hung on a mantelpiece.

   On Christmas morning the children rushed to empty their stockings.

   He hung a red stocking above the hearth and waited for morning.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of stock.

   The warehouse crew spent the morning stocking pallets of canned goods.

   They are stocking the lake with trout for the fishing season.

   Note

   The verb form behind progressives and gerunds alike: they are stocking the shelves, or I've almost finished stocking these groceries. It is a separate formation from the garment, though the spelling is identical. Most uses mean supplying or filling, but the form also serves stock's rarer senses: fitting an anchor with its stock, putting someone in the stocks, or the dated card-cheat's stacking of a deck.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A broad ring of differently colored fur on the lower part of a four-legged animal's leg.

   The mare's dark coat was broken by a single white stocking on the foreleg.

   Judges noted the matching stockings on all four of the colt's legs.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   In forestry, a measure comparing how densely trees actually grow on a site with the density that would make the best possible use of the land.

   Surveyors calculated the stocking across the plantation before recommending a thinning.

   Low stocking after the fire left much of the soil exposed.

   Similardensity

   Note

   A forester's measure that belongs with the verb, not the garment: land is read as stocked with trees, the way a lake is stocked with fish. Because it compares what is growing with what the land could ideally hold, foresters speak of high or low stocking for a stand or plantation. They calculate it before deciding whether an area needs thinning or replanting.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A knitted hood of cotton thread that a special process converts into an incandescent mantle for gas lighting.

   Workers dipped each stocking in a solution before it was fired into a mantle.

   The delicate stockings were knitted by machine and shipped to the lamp works.

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