Other forms: stocks
Stock is the goods a business has ready to sell. In stock, out of stock, take stock of the shelves.
The word does a great many other things. Stock is shares in a company, especially in American English, and the stock market is where they are traded. Stock is also the liquid made by boiling bones and vegetables, which is what a soup starts from. And stock as an adjective means standard and unoriginal: a stock answer, a stock character. Note take stock, meaning to pause and assess, which comes from counting what is on the shelves.
1nounstockThe goods a business has available to sell.
“That size is out of stock until Thursday.”
3nounliquidThe liquid made by boiling bones and vegetables.
“Use the stock rather than water and it is a different soup.”
4adjectivestandardStandard and unoriginal.
“He gave the stock answer and moved on.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
stock is goods held, or a supply.
Old English stocc meant a tree trunk or a log. From the trunk came the idea of a stem from which things grow — hence a family's stock, and livestock — and from a stored pile of logs came the sense of goods held ready. Every use is a tree seen from a different angle.
Middle English
stok
English, today
stock
Built from
From Middle English stok. From Middle English stok, from Old English stocc, from Proto-West Germanic stokk, from Proto-Germanic stukkaz (“tree-trunk”). Modern senses are mostly referring either to the trunk from which the tree grows (figuratively, its origin and/or support/foundation), or to a piece of wood, stick, or rod. The senses of "supply" and "raw material" arose from a probable conflation with steck (“an item of goods, merchandise”) or the use of split tally sticks consisting of foil or counterfoil and stock to capture paid taxes, debts or exchanges. a doublet of chock.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA