SOCKDOLAGER :
A heavy or knock-down blow.

This is one of the more famous of the set of extraordinary words that were coined in America in the early years of the nineteenth century, along with such gems as absquatulate, hornswoggle and skedaddle. Lexicographers are reluctant to speculate about where it came from (as usual as there's little evidence), but we may hazard a guess that it's a combination of sock, meaning to give somebody a blow, with doxology, the little hymn of praise sung towards the end of a church service.

As well as its literal meaning, sockdolager also came to mean something that was exceptional in any respect, especially, according to the OED, a particularly large fish; one sense given in an edition of Bartlett's dictionary in 1848 was "a type of fish hook". James Fenimore Cooper wrote in 1838 in Home as Found: "There is but one 'sogdollager' in the universe, and that is in Lake Oswego".

The particular claim to fame of sockdolager is that it was virtually the last word President Lincoln ever heard.

In Tom Taylor's play An American Cousin, there occurs the line "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologising old man-trap", and as the audience laughed, John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot.

copyright © Michael B Quinion

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