Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A brownish-red sandstone used as a building material.
- n. A house built or faced with brownish-red sandstone.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A name given to various kinds of dark-brown sandstone. In the United States it is the sandstone from the quarries in the Triassic or New Red Sandstone, and especially such a stone from quarries in the Connecticut river valley, much used as a building-stone.
- n. Decomposed iron pyrites.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable A variety of brown to red-brown sandstone once popular as a building material.
- n. countable A row house built of brownstone, especially in New York City. . A Manhattan brownstone
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A dark variety of sandstone, much used for building purposes.
- n. a building, especially a dwelling, faced with brownstone{1}.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a reddish brown sandstone; used in buildings
- n. a row house built of brownstone; reddish brown in color
Etymologies
- from brown + stone (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Today, the term brownstone can describe almost any row house, which typically has a facade of brick, limestone, actual brownstone or a mixture, he says.”
The Wall Street Journal: Brooklyn Brownstone With a Twist—It's New
“The word "brownstone" became a slang term for heroin, perhaps best immortalized in Guns N' Roses' 1987 song "Mr. Brownstone," but also evident in the Velvet Underground's 1967 song "I'm Waiting for the Man," where Lou Reed sings about going up to Harlem to meet his dealer, "Up to a brownstone, up three flights of stairs / Everybody's pinned you, but nobody cares.”
“So if the brownstone is well maintained, it's got the ironwork out front, it's got the street lamp — it's evocative.”
The Wall Street Journal: Burning Affection for Park Slope's Gas Lamps
“The Lowenstein (Jolly Royal) building, a beautiful brownstone, is lost and now the Lincoln American Tower is on fire.”
“The first level of the brownstone was a two-car garage.”
“The brownstone was a black hulk, the flag a shadow limply stirring over the entrance.”
“He devotes some time to the origins and consequences of cheap rent, but is also rapturous about the current renaissance of "bookish people" and "literary types" made possible by the so-called "brownstone movement" of the 1960s and '70s.”
“Chas, I think you extend the "brownstone" analogy well with your references to Wright and "Levittowns.”
“We have some excellent "brownstone" desings, where the game mechanics are defined long before a "pretty face" is placed on it.”
“With the "brownstone" method, the designer sought to build a building- and the detailing was an afterthought... all he cared about was the structure.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘brownstone’.
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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chromatic phrases
blue movie, brown study, purple prose, rosy scenario, golden mean, eminence grise, white nights, bronze age, silver bullet, orange juice, black death, technicolor yawn and 188 more...
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Contact!
Words for the guessing game of Contact, which is remarkably effective at killing time when you're with 2 or more people. The game is similar to Botticelli.
totemic, fungible, solipsism, copacetic, adamantine, pessary, vivisect, postlapsarian, doggerel, waif, stentorian, zoetrope and 67 more...
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working list / temp / to be moved to ...
inchoate, hump day, full-tilt, handicap, catapult into nat..., flannel, have an agenda ag..., superannuation, loft conversion, pentacle, encapsulate, hen night and 50 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for brownstone.
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