Stocks

I love the Oxford English Dictionary. Its erudition and information are a never-ending source of comfort to me. The first set of it I ever had was given to me, on the occasion of my marriage, by a much older European gentleman who believed that I had the makings of a poet. That set was damaged in a flood. My current set was the gift of the man who loves me even though I am not a poet.

All this introduces my finding that stock is a wonderful word whose history implies the organization of clear liquids made from bone and flesh. Stock originally meant the trunk of a tree deprived of its branches and leaves. That is a culinary stock. Stock took on many derivative meanings: the root stock of vine plantings; the family line, as in “he came of fine stock.”