Sockdologizing
adj
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Ambiguous term of abuse; scheming. nonce-word, not-comparable
""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.""
Example
More examples""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.""
Etymology
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.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.