Learn English – the origin of “stack” meaning $1000

Early on that word of course was used to talk about the action of cleaning something off with a garden hose, but that is not the meaning you are asking about. I do not recall ever hearing that term used with that meaning before the 80's. What happened in the 80's?

Well, SCTV had a very funny (to us USAsians) skit with a couple of stereotypical Canadians called the McKenzie Brothers. They were constantly calling each other "hosers", and talking about how they had "hosed" each other. The skit went the 80's equivalent of viral, with an album (with a couple of singles that got good airplay) and a movie spun off it. The effect was that we (in the USA) got "hoser" added to the language as sort of a good-natured insult, or a way to make fun of Canadian speech.

Along with it, we borrowed the verb and adverb forms of "hosed" from the same source. Its a much more useful word, so it kinda lost its association with Canadians, and got fully adopted into the USA lexicon.

So where did Canadians come up with these words? That's where personal experience fails me, so I have to rely on online sources:

Like the very similar term hosehead, the term may have referred to farmers of the Canadian prairies, who would siphon gas from farming vehicles with a hose during the Great Depression of the 1930s.[citation needed] The expression has since been converted to the verb 'to hose' as in to trick, deceive, or steal - for example: "That card-shark sure hosed me." Hosed has an additional meaning of becoming drunk - for example: "Let's go out and get hosed." Another possible origin is derived from hockey slang. Before ice resurfacers, the losing team in a hockey game would have to hose down the rink after a game. Thus the term "hoser" being synonymous with "loser".

Personally I prefer the hockey explanation, but that doesn't make it right.

Currently the OED says there is no clear evidence of the term being used prior to its use by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, which to my mind leaves a strong possibility that they may have invented the slang themselves (although they are both Canadian, so they could well just be the first to record an existing slang).

Firstly, while I see what you're getting at, I don't think rock is a synonym for create or utilize in the phrase rock a rhyme or rock the bells. I think a more appropriate synonym is excel at or rule. I think this sense is also what we mean by "rocking the couch." — That couch is mine, I'm totally have the best sleep of my life on that couch, you have the bed, no problem!

This is the same sense as you rock! Yes, I ROCK THAT COUCH. OK, I'm being a bit facetious here, but you see why those two examples cited here as "origins" don't connect exactly with the rock the couch meaning.

It's hard to pin down when this sense of rock became to mean what you're trying to express, because there is no hard line separating that sense from the older sense. To rock has meant to dance/create music/party/excel for a long time. When can the "new" sense be completely extracted from the "old" usage, as the word gradually becomes used in nearly every situation? (qv. "nice")

Ultimately, this meaning of rock has its origins in the phrase rock and roll, coming from a euphemistic verb phrase common among Black speakers of english meaning "to have sex". (Move back and forth.) This hidden meaning appeared in song titles and dance styles since the early 1930s. Which gives, of course, a whole new meaning to the phrase I rock the couch.

I found this quote in an article about Scotty Morris in the August 1988 issue of SPIN:

A neighborhood basketball star, he called himself La Rock because the player who scored the most points in a game was said to have rocked it, rocked the party.