King Cobb,
I'm not familiar with the book in question...is this a very academic, historical book published in England, in VERY formal prose?
If so, then the answer to your question is..."possibly." I can't say I have ever heard "stock" and "stalk" used interchangably. But the Oxford dictionary does include this little tidbit along side the standard definition of "stalk" that we'd all expect:
Origin - Middle English: probably a diminutive of dialect stale ‘rung of a ladder, long handle’.
That last bit suggests the term might have been used in centuries past. But again, I've never heard it done. The question is, why in a book written in modern prose would anyone use it, even if technically OK in a language sense?
It would be just plain goofy if it simply got past editing, but I guess weirder things have happened. Certainly it's harder to catch inadvertent use of another proper word, than it is to catch a typo.
Beyond this, I can tell you blue collar Red Sox fans would say both words with zero distinction. They speak of gun stawks, corn stawks, and tech stawks on the stawk exchange.
- Nudge
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