the.com/sack
a humble bag that doubles as a verb for looting, firing, and quarterback demolition
means A large bag of coarse fabric for holding goods; as a verb, to dismiss someone from a job, to plunder a captured city, or to tackle a quarterback behind the line.
from The 'bag' sense is ancient and well-travelled: Old English 'sacc,' from Latin 'saccus,' itself borrowed from Greek 'sakkos,' which traces back to a Semitic source (compare Hebrew 'saq') — the same root that gives us 'sackcloth.' The 'plunder a city' meaning likely comes from the Italian phrase 'mettere a sacco,' literally 'put into a bag,' i.e. carrying off the loot. The slang 'to get the sack' (be fired) is often told as a workman literally being handed back his bag of tools as he's let go — a story that may well be true, dating to roughly the 19th century. The football sense is a modern American extension, evoking a quarterback being 'bagged.'
- job loss
- getting the sack nods to medieval workers carrying tools home
- city killer
- to sack a city means total plunder and ruin
- gridiron
- sacking a quarterback wasn't an official NFL stat until 1982
- hit the
- hitting the sack once meant a literal straw-stuffed mattress
- ancient root
- the word traces to Hebrew and Greek for cloth bag
barry bonds 2007 — hit 73 home runs in a single season, breaking mark mcgwire's 1998 record of 70
lawrence taylor 1986 — recorded 20.5 sacks for the new york giants, nfl single-season record
reggie white career — accumulated 198 career sacks from 1985-2000, most in nfl history