Sack (pronounced sak)
(1) A large bag of strong, coarsely woven material, as
for grain, potatoes, or coal.
(2) The amount a sack holds; also called sackful the
amount contained in a sack, sometimes used as a unit of measurement.
(3) A bag, usually large.
(4) In slang, dismissal or discharge from employment.
(5) In slang, the bed, often as “in the sack”.
(6) In fashion, a loose-fitting dress, as a gown with a
Watteau back, especially one fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth
century (also spelled sacque); formerly, a loose-fitting hip-length jacket,
cloak or cape.
(7) A loose-fitting coat, jacket, or cape.
(8) In the slang of baseball, a base.
(9) In the slang of agriculture in South Midland, US, the
udder of a cow.
(10) In the slang of American Football, to tackle the
quarterback behind the line of scrimmage before the player is able to throw a
pass.
(11) In fashion, as sack-line, a loose-fitting, vaguely
tubular, enveloping style of dresses and coats which emerged first in 1957.
(12) To pillage or loot after capture; to plunder.
(13) A strong, light-colored wine, traditionally imported
from Spain and the Canary Islands.
(14) In cricket, a run scored off a ball not struck by
the batsman: allotted to the team as an extra (on sundry) and not to the
individual batsman; now usually called a bye (archaic).
(15) In vulgar slang, usually as ball-sack (although
there are imaginative variations): the scrotum.
(16) In fashion, as sack coat; a kind of coat worn by
men, and extending from top to bottom without a cross seam.
A dated form of sac (pouch in a plant or animal).
Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun sak, sake & sakke (bag, sackcloth), from the Old English sacc (sack, bag) & sæcc
(sackcloth, sacking), both from the Proto-West Germanic sakku, from the late Proto-Germanic sakkuz (sack), from the Latin saccus
(bag, sack, sackcloth), from the Ancient Greek σάκκος (sákkos) bag made from goat hair, sieve, burlap, large cloak (as for
a wedding dress), from the Semitic; In the
Hebrew and Phoenician, a śaq was a “cloth
made of hair, bag, mourning dress”. The
use to describe the pillage of a city or other settlement after conquest dates
from 1540–1550; from Middle French phrase mettre
à sac (to put to pillage, literally “to put (loot) in a sack”), sac in this
sense from the Italian sacco (looting,
loot), a shortened form of saccomano,
from the Middle High German sakman (pillager). As applies to alcohol, Sack was first
recorded in 1525–1535, from the French (vin)
sec (dry (wine)), from the Latin siccus (dry). It was cognate with the Dutch zak, the German Sack, the Swedish säck, the
Danish sæk, the Hebrew שַׂק (śaq) (sack,
sackcloth), the Aramaic סַקָּא, the Classical Syriac ܣܩܐ, (Ge'ez) ሠቅ (śäḳ), the Akkadian saqqu
and the Egyptian sꜣgꜣ. A doublet of sac.
It was a long time ago and, records
being scant, some etymologists suggest the word was originally Egyptian, a
nominal derivative of sꜣq (to gather or put together)
that also yielded the sok (sackcloth) and the Greek
borrowing came via a Semitic intermediary. Others reject this, noting that such an
originally Egyptian word would be expected to yield the Hebrew סַק rather than שַׂק and instead argue the
Coptic and Greek words are both borrowed from the Semitic, with the Coptic word perhaps developing via Egyptian sꜣgꜣ. The Japanese is the
descendent is theサック (sakku) and historically, sack was an alternative
spelling of sac (sacrifice).
Sack is a noun and verb, sack-like an adjective (there
seems never to have been either sackesque or sackish except in jocular use) and
sacker a noun. Other derive forms
include sackable and sackage. Historically,
the capacity of a sack has been defined in law.
Although long archaic and subject to (sometimes regional) variations depending
on commodity, the old English measure of weight, usually of wool, was equal to
13 stone (182 lb), or 26 stone (364 lb). The term survives in the Woolsack, on which
sits the presiding officer of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s
parliament (formerly the Lord Chancellor, now the Lord Speaker). Because there’s never been a universally
accept definition for sack (size, shape, construction or capacity), what some
call a sack others will call a bag, pack, pouch carryall, portmanteau, satchel,
tote etc or the constructs haversack, knapsack, rucksack. The only (loosely applied) conventions of use
appear to be that bags etc tend to be smaller and sacks larger and made from more
coarse material. Folklore said to be
medieval held that it was a bag if, when filled with potatoes, it could be
carried by a woman but, it if demanded the strength of a man, it was a sack; story
is likely apocryphal. The synonyms for
the plundering of cities include pillage, loot & ransack.
Sack dresses by Hubert de Givenchy, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.
Givenchy’s sack-line debuted in their spring-summer line on 1957's catwalks, Balenciaga showing a not dissimilar style just a few weeks later. Both were essentially an evolution of the “Shirt
Dress” which had attracted some attention the previous season and signaled a
shift from the fitted, structured silhouettes which had been the signature
motif of the decade. The sack-line dresses
were described by some critics as “shapeless” or “formless”, presumably because
they lacked any suggestion of the waistline which had existed for so long as
fashion’s pivot-point. However, the forms
the sack-line took would have been recognizable to anyone familiar with fluid
dynamics or the behavior of air in wind tunnels, a waistless dress which narrowed
severely towards the hem one of the optimal aerodynamic shapes. That was presumably a coincidence but Givenchy’s
press-kits at the 1957 shows did claim that “More than a fashion, it’s actually
a way of dressing” and one which must have found favor with at least some
women, not unhappy at being able to ditch the forbidding and restrictive, high-waisted
girdles needed to achieve the wasp-wasted “New Look” which Dior had introduced
to a post-war world anxious to escape wartime austerity.
Sack dress # 164 by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Spring Summer 1958 collection, Paris 1957.
Balenciaga’s sack dress was in 1957 probably
more exaggerated than Givenchy’s; loose and enveloping, it brought to fashion
an unprecedented gap between body and garment, emphasizing how radical a shift
it was the long tradition of using idealized version of the female form as the
basis for the tailored shape, designers making great efforts in their cuts to
emulate aspects of human movement in the behavior of fabrics. The sack-line disconnected the two, women now
feeling an moving within, rather than with the dress; it was really quite
subversive to suggest clothes might be designed for the comfort of women rather
than the gaze of men. Gone were the darts,
belts and bands which had so carefully be crafted to be suggestive of that
idealized shape, the woman’s body now and abstract entity which, within its enveloping
cocoon could be a very different that that seen usually on the catwalks. Within the fashion industry, the enthusiasm
with which the sack-line was received was restrained but cultural critics, then
less numerous but perhaps more erudite than today, were intrigued, modernity
welcomed in a field which had never embraced the avant-garde in the way of art,
literature and architecture, the link to functionalism especially noted. It has aged well and been influential although it would begat a less stylish variation on the theme, the dreaded "tent dress".
Marilyn Monroe in burlap sack dress, 1951.
The sack-line which appeared on the haute couture runways
in 1957 wasn’t an entirely new style, a loose-fitting dress, often as a gown
with a Watteau back had been fashionable from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth
century (when it was also spelled as both sack & sacque) and even before
that the terms had been applied to a a loose-fitting hip-length jacket, cloak
or cape and later there was the sack coat; a kind of coat worn by men, the cut extending
from top to bottom without a cross seam.
There was however a more recent take, Twentieth Century Fox’s PR operation
in 1951 taking advantage of a bitchy comment from a Hollywood columnist (plus ça change) to issue a series of
promotional photographs of Marilyn Monroe wearing a literal “sack dress”. There are a number of versions of the tale
but the one most often told is that Ms Monroe, then twenty-four and wearing a revealing
red dress, prompting one gossip columnist to snipe that she looked “cheap and vulgar” and would have been
better advised to wear “a potato sack.”
Twentieth Century Fox put her in one.
That may or may not be true and it could be the publicity
people just wanted some imaginative images, the sex-kitten’s soft curves and
the utilitarian angularity of a potato sack quite a juxtaposition and if the
intention was to prove she was so beautiful she could make even a potato sack
look good, the point was well made. The
photographs were used in Stare
magazine, several months before Playboy
would be launched with her on the cover and Stare
included an interview in which she’s alleged to have said she didn’t care for
potatoes because they tend to “put on
weight” but it must have been a more tolerant age because there’s no record
of her being attracting the opprobrium directed by sections of the vegetable
industry at President George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president
1989-1993) after he declared he didn’t like broccoli and it was banned from Air
Force One. Stare noted Ms Monroe had a better political antennae than the
president, for whatever her dietary strictures, “…she decided to do something for the potatoes!”
It was during the depression years of the 1930s that flour companies in the US became aware women were turning their cotton flour sacks into clothing, cloths and more. Money was scarce and seeing the possibility of increasing sales at what would be a marginal cost, one manufacturer began to package their product in sacks decorated with attractive patterns. Now such a move would be thought part of the “circular economy” but during the Great Depression, it was something that became popular because of economic necessity, “repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away” a widely-spread motto of the time. Other manufacturers soon followed and professional designers were sometimes used to provide more appealing patterns.
The practice declined in the early 1940s as the economy improved but continued during the war years because there were shortages of cotton and much of what was available was devoted to military needs and decorative fabric for dress-making was sometimes unobtainable. As prosperity overtook the land in the 1950s, the use of sacks to make clothing faded and by 1953, many manufacturers had switched from cotton to much cheaper paper sacks.
Lindsay Lohan adopted the sack-line early and returns to the style from time-to-time.
No comments:
Post a Comment