sacking

C2+ Topic:Materials & Substances

US /ˈsækɪŋ/ UK /ˈsækɪŋ/ See IPA manual

Meanings

1

noun
coarse fabric used to make sacks; dismissal from a job; plunder of a place

The sacking of the city left scarcely a building standing.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

1 noun · coarse fabric used to make... burlaphessiandismissal firing plunder pillage sack

Opposites

hiring

Word family

Related forms sack sackcloth

Etymology

A gerund/noun from the verb and noun sack, ultimately from Latin saccus ('bag'); the 'plunder' sense derives from Italian saccheggiare via the phrase 'put to the sack'.

saccus Latin sákkos Ancient Greek

View etymology graph ->

Topics

Materials & Substances Word Formation & Derivatives

External links

# sacking

**Type:** Word
**Level:** C2+
**Part of speech:** noun
**IPA (US):** /ˈsækɪŋ/
**IPA (UK):** /ˈsækɪŋ/

## Meanings
1. coarse fabric used to make sacks; dismissal from a job; plunder of a place

## Examples
- The sacking of the city left scarcely a building standing.

## Synonyms
- burlap
- hessian
- dismissal
- firing
- plunder
- pillage
- sack

## Antonyms
- hiring

## Related Forms
- sack
- sackcloth

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: saccus
- Root: sákkos

## Etymology
A gerund/noun from the verb and noun sack, ultimately from Latin saccus ('bag'); the 'plunder' sense derives from Italian saccheggiare via the phrase 'put to the sack'.

## AI Etymology
Sacking is a gerund or noun from the verb and noun sack, ultimately from Latin saccus ('bag'); the 'plunder' sense derives from Italian saccheggiare via the phrase 'put to the sack'. The historical chain includes Latin saccus and Ancient Greek sákkos. Older glosses in the chain include "bag", "plunder", and "put to the sack", which help explain the semantic range of the modern word. Morphologically, sacking is best read as borrowing, yielding an English noun shaped by both form history and later usage. In current English it functions as a noun, with the sense "coarse fabric used to make sacks; dismissal from a job; plunder of a place". related forms include sack and sackcloth. The result is an English noun whose etymology preserves the older forms while supporting the word's specialized modern meaning.

## Topics
- Materials & Substances
- Word Formation & Derivatives

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