stocking: [16] Stocking is a derivative of stock, in the now defunct sense ‘stocking’. This appears to have arisen in the 15th century from the blackly humorous comparison of the stocks in which one’s legs are restrained as a punishment with ‘leggings, hose’. Until comparatively recently stocking was a unisex term (as it still is in the expression in one’s stockinged feet); the restriction to ‘women’s hose’ is a 20th-century development. => stock
