SACK

(Fr. vin sec, from which the term is generally supposed to be derived.) A Spanish wine of the dry kind. The important part which it plays in Shakspeare is well known. Falstaff calls it sherris sack, v\ hich means sherry sack; so called, says Blount, in his Olo ographia. from Xeres, a sea town of Corduba, where that kind of sack is made. At a later period, sack seems to have been used as a general term for all kinds of sweet wines; and it has been conjectured that, instead of being a corruption of the French sec, as above noticed, it derives its name more probably from a common practice of the Spaniard*, of putting their sweet wines into sacks made of goal other,skins, and thus transporting them from one vilace to ap [s. 1094]