Word.ws English Dictionary

sockdologizing

sockdologizing adjective: ambiguous term of abuse; scheming.

Adjective

sockdologizing (not comparable)

  1. (nonce-word) Ambiguous term of abuse; scheming.
    • "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap."1858, Tom Taylor, Our American Cousin
    • But these confabulated, sockdologizing tins refuse to warm up. I swear they are doing it to perversely annoy me.1988, Defa Samka, Pony Soldiers

Origin of sockdologizing

Nonce word, from sockdolager + -ize + -ing. Coined 1858 by Tom Taylor for the play Our American Cousin. Taylor presumably learned sockdolager from Dictionary of Americanisms (1848) by John Russell Bartlett and used it to evoke Americanness in his play’s title character.

Questions about sockdologizing

What does sockdologizing mean?
Sockdologizing means ambiguous term of abuse; scheming.
What part of speech is sockdologizing?
Sockdologizing is an adjective.

Words near sockdologizing in the dictionary

  1. sockdolagizing
  2. sockdollager
  3. sockdollagers
  4. sockdologer
  5. sockdologers
  6. sockdologizing
  7. socked
  8. socked away
  9. socked in
  10. socked into
  11. socked it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sockdologizing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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