[Ads-l] Word: dead stock / deadstock =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=93_?=never worn footwear or clothing; alternative definition: never sold items

[Colin Morris]

OED actually has quotes for the sense of "unsold/commercially inactive
capital" going back to 1622. I was able to find an 1897 instance of it
being applied to unsold clothing offered for resale:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=xn07AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA295&dq=%22deadstock%22
"felt hats of various antiquated shapes, hard and soft, the deadstock of
the shops of Bombay, Calcutta and London" [describing goods sold in Laotian
shops]

There's also another sense of "farm tools" (in contrast to livestock). A
search for "live and dead stock" on Google or Google Books brings up lots
of old farm auction catalogues and similar.

To its credit, Wiktionary lists both senses:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deadstock.

On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 2:39 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Website: Marker Medium
> Article: How Supreme-Style Merch Drops Took Over Corporate America
> Author: Adam Bluestein
> Date: March 3, 2021
>
> https://marker.medium.com/how-supreme-style-merch-drops-took-over-corporate-america-48dcea56e5c6
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Unworn Jordans, Airs, and Dunks — called “deadstock” — are the gold
> standard of the resale economy — and, really, as liquid and versatile
> a global currency as a U.S. dollar or a euro, “a bona fide asset
> class” as Bloomberg Businessweek put it recently.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Website: Urban Dictionary
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Deadstock
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Deadstock
> Brand New. Never worn, Never Tried and would usually include a box for
> the shoes.
> "Up for auction are some DS Nike Air Jordan's in a size 10, they have
> been never been worn and/or tried on."
> by IWMJ June 06, 2005
> [End excerpt]
>
> Website: Vintage clothing authority
>
> https://vintageclothingauthority.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/what-is-dead-stock/
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> What is dead stock?
> The term is thrown around quite a bit but what the heck does it mean?
> Dead stock technically means that the vintage item was never sold.
> Most people use the term to describe something that is unused.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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