stocc

The Old English word stocc meant 'trunk,' 'stump,' or 'block of wood.' It was a word for raw material: a piece of tree, cut and waiting to be used. From this single source, English grew an astonishing number of meanings, all connected by the idea of a fixed, solid base. The punishment device -- the stocks -- was a wooden frame made from heavy timbers that locked a seated person's ankles (or sometimes wrists) in place. The person sat on the ground or a bench while the community gawked. It was the sitting version of the pillory.

Stocks were used across Europe from at least the Anglo-Saxon period through the nineteenth century. Nearly every English village had a set, usually positioned near the church or the market square -- maximum visibility, maximum shame. Offenses punished by the stocks included drunkenness, swearing, cheating at trade, and minor theft. The stocks were for public nuisances, not serious criminals. They were the community's way of saying: we see you, and we disapprove.

The financial meaning of 'stock' developed separately but from the same root. In the fifteenth century, a 'stock' was a fund of money or goods -- the 'trunk' or base from which commerce grew. Tally sticks, notched pieces of wood used to record debts, were called stocks. The 'stock exchange' was originally where people traded these wooden tallies. The New York Stock Exchange grew from a word for a piece of wood.

English borrowed nothing here: 'stock' is native Anglo-Saxon, and its meanings multiplied through metaphor over a millennium. The punishment device, the financial instrument, the livestock (animals as living property), the gunstock (the wooden base of a rifle), and the cooking stock (the base broth) all descend from the same tree trunk. Cut down a tree, and you can build anything.