Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of holystone.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Pankburn did the dirty tasks, scraping masts, holystoning decks, working the alcohol poison out of his system.

    “Have you lived? What have you got to show for it?” 2008

  • Usually, on a ship at sea, the men would be rousted from their hammocks in half an hour to begin holystoning the decks and cleaning everything in sight.

    The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

  • Still, he'd agreed that those men without specific duties that day — holystoning the lower deck, the usual watches, deicing the rigging, deck shoveling, ship repair, cairn repair, tutoring — could go work on final preparations for the masque, and about a dozen men headed off into the darkness after breakfast, two Marines with muskets accompanying them.

    The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

  • Overhead came the rumble and scrape of crewmen holystoning the decks for the second time that day.

    The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007

  • Eh, but it was a comfort this morning not to hear the holystoning on the deck.

    The Newcomes 2006

  • Up near the bow, several crewmen were down on their knees, enthusiastically holystoning the deck; amidships, a group of ten or so were going through gun drill.

    INTELLIVORE DIANE DUANE 2000

  • Bel-Sidek was hard at it, holystoning the foredeck of a tubby merchantman out of Pella, a Herodian tributary where friends of the Living worked the docks.

    The Tower of Fear Cook, Glen 1989

  • Right now he would cheerfully have traded all the holystoning going on in the downlevels for one particular piece of good news.

    THE WOUNDED SKY DIANE DUANE 1983

  • Right now he would cheerfully have traded all the holystoning going on in the downlevels for one particular piece of good news.

    THE WOUNDED SKY DIANE DUANE 1983

  • Right now he would cheerfully have traded all the holystoning going on in the downlevels for one particular piece of good news.

    THE WOUNDED SKY DIANE DUANE 1983

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