The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stocking \Stock"ing\, n. [From Stock, which was formerly used of a covering for the legs and feet, combining breeches, or upper stocks, and stockings, or nether stocks.]
A close-fitting covering for the foot and leg, usually knit or woven.
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Any of various things resembling, or likened to, a stocking[1]; as:
A broad ring of color, differing from the general color, on the lower part of the leg of a quadruped; esp., a white ring between the coronet and the hock or knee of a dark-colored horse.
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A knitted hood of cotton thread which is eventually converted by a special process into an incandescent mantle for gas lighting.
Blue stocking. See Bluestocking.
Stocking frame, a machine for knitting stockings or other hosiery goods.
Usage examples of "blue stocking".
The driver's neck was soft, white: wisps of white hair straggled from under the blue stocking cap.
She was small and sharp-featured and wore a blue stocking cap with a bell on the tassel.
Her movements now, stooping to retrieve a smoke-blue stocking and trail it across a chair, momentarily teasing apart two ribs in the upward-slanting Venetian blinds to peer at the cold gray world outside, executing a fraction of a dance figure, stopping to smile at emptiness .