{"id":6854,"date":"2025-05-06T13:39:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T13:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6854"},"modified":"2025-05-07T13:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:41:12","slug":"word-of-the-day-sack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/05\/06\/word-of-the-day-sack\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Sack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to On This Day, is sack.<\/em> Sack<\/em> can be either a noun or a verb, and it has several meanings. As a noun, it can refer to a kind of large bag or the contents of such a bag. It can refer to a woman\u2019s loose fitting dress. It can refer to the result of one\u2019s being fired from a job (\u201cHe got the sack\u201d). It can refer to a hammock or bunk or bed (\u201cI\u2019m going to hit the sack\u201d). It can refer to a base in baseball (\u201cRicky Henderson stole 130 sacks in 1982\u201d). Or it can refer to tackling a quarterback who has gone back to pass (\u201cMichael Strahan set the record for most sacks in a season in 1982\u201d). And in centuries past, sack<\/em> referred to a a dry wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a verb, sack<\/em> can be used in a variety of ways related to the use of the word as a noun. For example, one can sack one\u2019s groceries, or sack the quarterback, But the verb form can also refer to conquering a city and pillaging, the city then being robbed and the buildings destroyed and the people injured or killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason for the variety of meanings is etymology. Sack appears in the language before Early Modern English: \u201c\u2019large oblong bag,\u2019 Middle English sak<\/em>, from Old English sacc<\/em> (West Saxon), sec<\/em> (Mercian), s\u00e6c<\/em> (Old Kentish) \u2018large cloth bag,\u2019 also \u2018sackcloth,\u2019 from Proto-Germanic *sakkiz<\/em> (source also of Middle Dutch sak<\/em>, Old High German sac<\/em>, Old Norse sekkr<\/em>, but Gothic sakkus<\/em> probably is directly from Greek), an early borrowing from Latin saccus<\/em> (also source of Old French sac<\/em>, Spanish saco<\/em>, Italian sacco<\/em>), from Greek sakkos<\/em> \u2018bag (made of goat hair); sieve; burlap, large burlap cloak,\u2019 which is from Semitic (compare Hebrew, Phoenician saq<\/em> \u2018sack<\/em>, cloth of hair, bag, mourning-dress\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wide spread of this word for \u2018a bag\u2019 probably is due to the incident in the Biblical story of Joseph in which a sack<\/em> of corn figures (Genesis xliv). In English, the meaning \u2018a sack<\/em> or sack<\/em> material used as an article of clothing\u2019 as a token of penitence or mourning is from c. 1200 (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=sack<\/a>). The reference to wine relates to the importation of a French word (of course): \u201c\u2019sherry,\u2019 1530s, an alteration of French (vin) sec<\/em> \u2018dry (wine),\u2019 from Latin siccus<\/em> \u2018dry\u2019 (see siccative<\/a>). Originally of strong, light-colored wine from Spain and the Canaries. OED notes that the vowel is \u2018not a normal development from the original \u201cseck<\/em>.\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the other meanings may be derived metaphorically: sack<\/em> as a bed war originally nautical, when sailors slept in hammocks that may have seemed like a big bag. Sack<\/em> was firing someone may have related to a time when tradesmen carried their own tools to work with them in a large bag. Etymonline suggests that this explains using sack<\/em> to refer to pillaging, that people would put things into a sack. But it may also be that sack<\/em> is a shortening of the word ransack<\/em>, which appears in the language in the \u201cmid-13c., ransaken<\/em>, \u2018to plunder; to make a search, search thoroughly,\u2019 from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse rannsaka<\/em> \u2018to pillage,\u2019 literally \u2018search the house\u2019 (especially legally, for stolen goods), from rann<\/em> \u2018house,\u2019 from Proto-Germanic *raznan<\/em> (c.f. Gothic razn<\/em>, Old English \u00e6rn<\/em> \u2018house;\u2019 Old English r\u00e6gn<\/em> \u2018a plank, ceiling;\u2019 see barn<\/a>) + saka<\/em> \u2018to search,\u2019 related to Old Norse soekja<\/em> \u2018seek\u2019 (see seek<\/a>). Properly it would have evolved as *ransake<\/em>; the present form perhaps was influenced by sack<\/em><\/a> (v.1)\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=sack<\/a>). So maybe the verb sack <\/em>ultimately derives from both sack <\/em>and ransack<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1527, the city of Rome, the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, was sacked by the army of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. That\u2019s what the historians say. But what exactly does that mean? Sacking a city is something that happens after the city\u2019s defensive forces have been defeated. The city leaders may even have surrendered, laid down their arms, and opened the city gates. That is when the sacking begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the first part of sacking a city is pillaging: that is the violent taking of goods and treasures from the citizens and buildings. Pillaging in the modern era is against international law and is considered a war crime, but there was no such thing in the 16th<\/sup> century. Famously King Henry V of England had forbade pillaging by his army when he conquered France in the early 15th<\/sup> century, even going so far as to execute any soldiers who engaged in pillaging. So why would the army of Charles V pillage Rome? It probably had to do with payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles V had recruited an army of Germans and Spaniards. Germany and Spain were both part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, but the German troops were mercenaries. Well, they were theoretically mercenaries because a mercenary is paid for his fighting, and Charles\u2019s troops hadn\u2019t been paid. So despite the command of Charles to not pillage Rome, the soldiers did it anyway. Many of the German soldiers were Landsknecht, pikemen who were very effective on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire for a century and a half, including the resistance against the Ottoman Empire\u2019s attempts to conquer Europe. Some of the were Roman Catholics, but some of them were Lutherans, so the pillaging had a bit of a religious element. However, the major problem was that they were compensating themselves for fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sack also included things worse than pillaging. Charles\u2019s army kidnapped people and held them for ransom, which was another way of compensating themselves. They took money from some of the cardinals living in Rome to not pillage their houses. But they also murdered and raped people. In our time, these practices are condemned as war crimes, at least in most cases, but they were fairly common practices in previous eras (one reason I am glad that I live in the 21st<\/sup> century).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The army held the city for over a month, at which time Pope Clement VII agreed to pay a massive amount of money to save his life. And the sack of Rome finally ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rome had been sacked before. But in the past it had been barbarians. This sacking was accomplished by Christians against the capital of the Catholic Church. Then again, Clement VII had created an alliance with Francis I of France and some other smaller countries to try to hem in the power of the Holy Roman Emperor. That alliance would have included Henry VIII of England except that Henry had pitched a little fit because they wouldn\u2019t come to England to sign the treaty (it was signed in a French town named Cognac, so the result war was the War of the League of Cognac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And of course most of the people who died in the War of the League of Cognac, and all of the women and children who were raped, had nothing to gain by this conquest of Rome. In fact, for just the pillaging part of the sack of Rome, we might even sympathize with the soldiers who had risked their lives for the ungrateful emperor who hadn\u2019t paid them. Maybe some of them took enough wealth that they were able to quit the mercenary business entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is a painting by Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), a Dutch painter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to On This Day, is sack. Sack can be either a noun or a verb, and it has several meanings. As a noun, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,284,701,734],"class_list":["post-6854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-rome","tag-sack","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6856,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854\/revisions\/6856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}