Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Socks and stockings; hose.
  • noun Chiefly British Stockings, socks, and underclothing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Specifically, hose of all kinds for the foot and leg; stockings and socks collectively; by extension, the whole class of goods in which a hosier deals; the stock of a hosier.
  • noun A factory where stockings, undergarments, etc., are woven by machinery.
  • noun The business of a hosier

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The business of a hosier.
  • noun Stockings, in general; goods knit or woven like hose.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun undergarments worn on the legs, such as socks, stockings, and pantyhose
  • noun the business of a hosier

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun socks and stockings and tights collectively (the British include underwear)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[hosier, maker of stockings (from Middle English, from hose, a stocking; see hose) + –y.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hosier + -y

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Examples

  • Oct. 27, 1939: Women crowd into a department store in Wilmington, DE to snatch up a new kind of hosiery created at the nearby Dupont plant.

    October 2007 2007

  • Oct. 27, 1939: Women crowd into a department store in Wilmington, DE to snatch up a new kind of hosiery created at the nearby Dupont plant.

    Why Not "I Can't Believe It's Not Steel"? 2007

  • I laughed, and told him 'He had better keep his mind on the team, and not think about such things as the kind of hosiery I was wearing, that he must not look upon me as a dry-goods window.'

    A California Girl Edward Eldridge

  • The Acme Hosiery Mills, of which D.B. McCrary is President, manufactures a large line of hosiery which is sold over a wide territory.

    Drummond's Pictorial Atlas of North Carolina. Albert Y. Drummond 1924

  • At the very least, a VS store is a few steps above the Indian "hosiery" store where storekeeprs would shout "Ei namaa to opor theke ekta aath-threesh boudir jonne" (Ei throw down a 38 for "boudi" here) with all the subtlety of Shatabdi Express and where Gopal ganjee

    Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind 2008

  • The guests seat themselves, as at a fashionable party, in a semicircle, and the gayety of the evening begins with conundrums and playing upon the banjo; the gentlemen are in their morning-coats, and the ladies in a display of hosiery which is now no longer surprising, and which need not have been mentioned at all except for the fact that, in the case of the first lady, it seemed not to have been freshly put on for that party.

    Suburban Sketches William Dean Howells 1878

  • “The term ‘pantyhose’ originated in the United States, referring to the combination of ‘panties’ (an American term for women’s underpants) with sheer nylon hosiery, meaning they are usually worn without other undergarments.” nrg |

    I say pyjama… 2008

  • The k sound present in the variant form *kus- shifted to an h sound in the ancestor language of English, as seen in the Old English words hosa and hose, covering for the legs, and early versions of modern hose, as in pantyhose and hosiery.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • The k sound present in the variant form *kus- shifted to an h sound in the ancestor language of English, as seen in the Old English words hosa and hose, covering for the legs, and early versions of modern hose, as in pantyhose and hosiery.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Hems became shorter, hosiery was rolled down to reveal parts of the leg, and dresses were deeply cut to expose cleavage.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

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