sockdolager

[ sok-dol-uh-jer ]

noun

, Older Slang.

1. something unusually large, heavy, etc.
2. a decisive reply, argument, etc.
3. a heavy, finishing blow:

   His right jab is a real sockdolager.

Word History and Origins

Origin of sockdolager¹

1820–30, Americanism; sock ² + -dolager, of uncertain origin

Example Sentences

It also includes “absquatulate,” ”anathema,” ”epigone,” ”puerile,” ”rumpus,” ”sockdolager,” ”sybaritic,” ”torpid” and “turpitude.”

From Washington Times

The impassable barrage comes a hundred feet below the point where the left-hand torrent precipitates itself at right-angles into the current of the right-hand one, and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a “V” and form one big walloping sockdolager.

From Project Gutenberg

Now 1,540 pages, with 22,500 quotations, it is a sockdolager, Nearly 3,000 of the quotations are new| to this edition, ranging from the maxims of Ptahhotpe, an Egyptian vizier of the 24th century B.C.

From Time Magazine Archive

This is the so-called Primary Contradiction of Capitalism, and is the sockdolager of the Marxist argument.

From Time Magazine Archive

Gore said he hoped the argument would make no more than "an inconsequential ripple in the flowing tide of rhetoric which I have . . . enjoyed exchanging with the inimitable and euphonious sockdolager from Illinois."

From Time Magazine Archive

More About Sockdolager

Where does sockdolager come from?

Sockdolager, meaning a “decisive blow or remark,” is a 19th-century American original. The origin of such silly-sounding words like sockdolager are, often, sometimes just that—a fanciful act of silliness.

However, it’s sometimes claimed (though etymologists aren’t convinced of this theory) that the word combines sock (“to strike or hit”) with doxology, “a hymn or phrase praising God.”

A form of the word sockdolager in the play Our American Cousin may have been one of the last words President Abraham Lincoln heard right before he was assassinated in 1865.

Many more amusing Americanisms await in our slideshow “These Wacky Words Originated In The USA.”

Did you know … ?

Well, it turns out Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, specifically chose the saying of the word sockdolager as his cue to shoot the president. Booth, who was an actor, knew that the biggest audience laughter always followed the word and believed the laughter would muffle his gunshot.

As slang, sockdolager has largely fallen by the wayside, so using it today generally has a folksy, old-fashioned effect. Looking for something more current instead? Consider knockout punch or finisher.