Dictionary Definition
sacked adj : having been robbed and destroyed by
force and violence; "the raped countryside" [syn: despoiled, pillaged, raped, ravaged]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Verb
sacked- past of sack
Extensive Definition
- For the gridiron football term, see quarterback sack
The phrase was current in 17th-century France and
was said of a servant or worker who had been dismissed by their
master or boss. The expression appears in Randle
Cotgrave’s 1611 Dictionary under ‘sac,’ which is ‘bag’ in
French: “‘On luy a donné son sac’— said of servant whom his master
hath put away.” Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang provided the
equivalent expressions used by the Dutch ‘iemand den zak geven,’ to
give someone the sack, and ‘den zak krijgen,’ to get the sack, but
no dates were given.
The probable explanation for the expression is
that in medieval times workman carried the tools or implements of
their trade in a bag or sack, which they left at the end of the day
in a safe place at their worksite. When an unsatisfactory worker
was to be fired, on the last day on the job, his employer would
hand him his pay and the sack containing his tools – he had gotten
the SACK, he had been SACKED.
Another somewhat less likely explanation, but one
that is not discounted by many sources, is that Turkish sultans who
grew tired of or dissatisfied in some way with a wife, had her
taken from the harem, sewed up in a sack, and dumped into the
Bosphorous. This
practice of ‘sacking’ as a way of disposing of condemned criminals
was also practiced by the Romans who similarly threw the unlucky
chaps into the Tiber.
References
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
- Oxford Dictionary of Slang
- American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (1992) Houghton Mifflin Company
- Cassell Dictionary of Slang (1998) ISBN 0-304-34435-4
- Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
- Chapman's Dictionary of American Slang
- Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés
- Picturesque Expressions by Urdang