Your Socks Are Untied

So a couple days ago I was arguing with a friend about something: If a person is wearing socks and shoes, and their shoes are untied, would it be correct to say that their socks are untied? I said that your socks are untied and he said that they aren't.

My argument

Consider if you kidnapped someone and used a rope to tie them up in your basement. You didn't physically tie the person's limbs in a knot to keep them there, you tied a rope to them so they couldn't get out. Nonetheless we call that tying the person up because the person is restrained by a knot, and if the person gets out we can call that getting untied.

Returning to the sock argument, your socks are stuck inside your shoes because your shoes are tightened around them by knots. If restraining a person in your basement using a knotted rope counts as tying the person up, then restraining your socks inside your shoes using laces counts as tying them up. And similarly when this restraint is removed, that means that your socks are untied.

His argument

If your shoes are untied and you're wearing socks under your shoes, that doesn't mean that your socks are untied because your socks aren't the things being tied in the first place, your shoes are. In the kidnapped person example, it isn't the person who's tied up, it's the rope. The fact that we say that the person is tied up is a weird language quirk.

My brother's point of view

I asked my brother about this and this is what he had to say:

In the kidnapped person example, you say that the person is tied up because the purpose of the rope is to restrain the person. If the person gets loose, you say that the person got untied because the rope failed to serve its purpose. Technically the person's shirt is also restrained, but if the person were to somehow take their shirt off, we wouldn't say that the shirt got untied because the rope didn't fail in any way.

The purpose of shoelaces is to keep your feet in your shoes, not necessarily to keep your socks in your shoes. So, if your shoelaces come undone, it's correct to say that your feet are untied, but it's not correct to say that your socks are untied. If your socks were to somehow slip out of your shoes while leaving your feet inside, that would not be a failure of the shoelaces to secure your socks, it would be a failure of your socks to stay on your feet.

Where we stand now

I'm still thinking through my brother's argument, but I found a couple possible issues with it:

• Is restraining the foot the only job of a shoe or is it to restrain whatever's inside it, sock included?
• Do we say that something is tied up only when it's deliberately restrained or does it also count if it being restrained is just a side effect of some other purpose?

I'd be curious to hear if any of you have thoughts on this.

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