sack

1. 1. A large bag of strong coarse material for holding objects in bulk.

   2. A similar container of paper or plastic.

   3. The amount that such a container can hold.

2. also sacque A short loose-fitting garment for women and children.

3. Slang Dismissal from employment: finally got the sack after a year of ineptitude.

4. Informal A bed, mattress, or sleeping bag.

5. Baseball A base.

6. Football A successful attempt at sacking the quarterback.

1. To place into a sack.

2. Slang To discharge from employment. See Synonyms at dismiss.

3. Football To tackle (a quarterback attempting to pass the ball) behind the line of scrimmage.

Word History: The ordinary word sack carries within it a few thousand years of commercial history. Sack, which probably goes back to Middle Eastern antiquity, has a long history because it and its ancestors denoted an object used in trade between various peoples. Thus the Greeks got their word sakkos, "a bag made out of coarse cloth or hair," from the Phoenicians with whom they traded. We do not know the Phoenician word, but we know words that are akin to it, such as Hebrew śaq and Akkadian saqqu. The Greeks then passed the sack, as it were, to the Latin-speaking Romans, who transmitted their word saccus, "a large bag or sack," to the Germanic tribes with whom they traded, who gave it the form *sakkiz (other peoples have also taken this word from Greek or Latin, including speakers of Welsh, Russian, Polish, and Albanian). The speakers of Old English, a Germanic language, used two forms of the word, sæc, from *sakkiz, and sacc, directly from Latin; the second Old English form is the ancestor of our sack.