For some time now, some of my on-line friends have advised me to provide a version of CassidySlangScam without the invective aimed at Cassidy and his supporters. In response to that advice, I am working on providing a glossary of the terms in Cassidy’s ludicrous book How The Irish Invented Slang with a short, simple and business-like explanation of why Cassidy’s version is wrong.
The late Daniel Cassidy, in his work of etymological fantasy, How The Irish Invented Slang, claimed that stock, as in the phrase ‘a stock of a man’, comes from the Irish staic.
Stock, of course, means a tree-trunk and makes perfect sense as a description of a well-built man. This is an ancient word of Germanic origin. It is found in Old English in the form stocc. Irish staic is a borrowing of the English word stack, which is of Old Norse origin.
cassidyslangscam 