working your socks off

[chris1970]

where does the phrase working your socks off come from?

[Quizmonster]

There are quite a few idioms - including some rather naughty ones - involving socks, as in knock the socks off = beat thoroughly...pull your socks up = improve your performance etc.
Work your socks off is just a variant of those, the earliest of which seem to have appeared in the early 19th century.
I suppose the idea behind them is that people are going to be so surprised by your activity that they will be 'blown out' of their footwear. Presumably, work your socks off suggests that you are rushing about so much that you have worn your shoes out and are now doing the same to your socks.

[Clanad]

Q's inselbergic response seems almost lonely and in need of some periphrasis or so it seems.

As usual, our resident Scottish bard is correct... well, nearly. Seems the original noun employed in this phrase... sock was descended from the Latin soccus (no kidding) and meant "light shoe or slipper" when it entered the forerunner of the English language around 900AD. By the early 14th century, "sock" had arrived at its modern meaning of "a short stocking covering the ankle and usually part of the calf." That arrangement of shoes-over-socks is important in understanding "knock your socks off." The phrase first appeared in the mid-19th century meaning "to beat or vanquish someone thoroughly," at first used literally to mean to win in a knock-down fistfight so savage that the loser might expect not to only lose his shoes in the fracas but his socks as well. The number of brawlers who actually lost their socks was probably pretty small, but a threat "to knock your socks off" was one of a number of such hyperbolic pugilistic phrases popular at the time, including "knock your lights out" and "knock you into next week."

From there the phrase mutated a bit more and "to have one's socks knocked off" came to mean "to be amazed, delighted, very impressed," (According to Word Detective)

I always appreciate Q's defense of change in the staid English language and offer, finally "... if seems surprising that a very violent metaphor should end up as an expression of critical acclaim, keep in mind that the term "blown away," now routinely found in book and movie rave reviews, originally meant "to be killed by gunfire."
(Also included from Word Detective)