Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A hard, fine-grained stone for honing tools. Also called snakestone.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A stone for sharpening cutlery or tools by friction. Whetstones are made of various kinds of stone, the finer kinds being, a silicious slate, and when used are moistened with oil or water.
- n. Figuratively, that which sharpens, stimulates, or incites the faculties or appetites.
Wiktionary
- n. A hard stone or piece of synthetically bonded hard minerals that has been formed with at least one flat surface, used to sharpen or hone an edged tool.
- n. computing A benchmark for evaluating the power of a computer.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A piece of stone, natural or artificial, used for whetting, or sharpening, edge tools.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a flat stone for sharpening edged tools or knives
Etymologies
- From whet ("to sharpen") + stone (Wiktionary)
Examples
“That was of plain black leather, but it included a pocket that had once held some small tool and recalled the whetstone pocket on the manskin sheath of _Terminus Est_.”
“Shaftesbury's test (which is a part of the rake's creed, and what I may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred subject into ridicule.”
“Lord Shaftesbury’s test (which is a part of the rake’s creed, and what I may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred subject into ridicule.”
“The teeth of these people also, whatever they may suffer in their colour by chewing betel, are an object of great attention: The ends of them, both in the upper and under jaw, are rubbed with a kind of whetstone, by a very troublesome and painful operation, till they are perfectly even and flat, so that they cannot lose less than half a line in their length.”
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 13
“They include a whetstone from Norway, a bronze ringpin from Ireland, his sword with beautifully decorated hilt, a spear and a shield which survive only as metal fittings, and pottery.”
The Guardian: Viking chieftain's burial ship excavated in Scotland after 1,000 years
“They're not "wet stones" but rather "whetstones" as in "whet: to make keen or more acute;" whet my appetite "; to sharpen by rubbing, as on a whetstone”
Learn To Sharpen Good Knives With Water Stones | Lifehacker Australia
“Eh, I just use the minosharp for my Global knives since no one will sharpen them and I do not trust my hand at a whetstone.”
Learn To Sharpen Good Knives With Water Stones | Lifehacker Australia
“He heard the whine of axe-blade on whetstone and the first shiver of fear went through him.”
“When done right, comics are a cognitive whetstone, providing two or three or more different but entangled streams of information in a single panel.”
“At the time of her death Wetzsteon pronounced“whetstone” was the poetry editor of The New Republic and a faculty member at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘whetstone’.
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set phasers to...
you name the setting
I've tuned mine to be gentler and kinder
following suit is not mandatory but would be appreciatedcoddle, confuse, flummox, tap, furrow, instigate, invigorate, punnify, logical, must... act... be..., bowdlerise, laughing gas and 435 more...
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quality words
This is a mix of new words I've read studying for the GRE verbal and words I use normally. I also check back on these words if I don't use them often enough.
ineffable, septuagenarian, sesquipedalian, argyle, coalescence, profundity, vivisepulture, defenestrate, concatenate, usurp, diatribe, veracious and 461 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
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merfee's Words
supple, dichotomy, relish, rhapsody, pneumonoultramicr..., embrace, ishmael, ebullient, recalcitrant, elegy, char, lugubrious and 522 more...
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miscellanea
antimacassar, snootful, sessile, glagolitic, marrowsky, farrago, keel, calumny, rheum, talisman, tally, awry and 508 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, W
washboard, winterbourne, winze, wirble, waterway, windrow, winceyette, waft, whiffletree, wheelbarrow, whicker, wacky and 170 more...
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trisherrata's Words
gendarme, proficient, exculpatory, disingenuous, smitten, mendacity, meretricious, vertiginous, ineffable, languor, exsanguinate, eponymous and 45 more...
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compound words
My favourites.
birdbath, gallowglass, lamplight, chokecherry, lightbox, riptide, softshoe, snowshed, bluebird, matchbox, sugarcane, nightcap and 64 more...
Tweets
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