Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A stone held in the lap on which shoemakers hammer leather to make it more solid.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A stone for the lap, on which shoemakers beat leather.

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

  • noun A stone for the lap, on which shoemakers used to beat leather.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

lap +‎ stone

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Examples

  • Now it's cannon balls and axes and disks -- if a "lapstone" be a disk -- it's a flat stone, at any rate.

    The Book of the Damned Charles Fort

  • "lapstone," quite as Mr. Symons called a spherical object a "cannon ball": bent upon a discrediting incongruity:

    The Book of the Damned Charles Fort

  • This object of worked stone, or this shoemaker's lapstone, was made of

    The Book of the Damned Charles Fort

  • The lady stands in the centre of the stage, and rests her unslippered foot on a small box, while the knight of the lapstone and hammer is engaged in taking the measure of her foot.

    Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants James H. Head

  • They were visited by Dr.H. Johnstone-Lavis, the correspondent to _Nature_, whose investigations had convinced him that the object was a "shoemaker's lapstone."

    The Book of the Damned Charles Fort

  • Master's vineyard, she could slip on her bonnet and shawl and just run into the preaching service close by, and gather strength and encouragement from the earnest prayers and humble exhortations of those men whom God had found in the quarry, at the loom, in the mine, or at the lapstone, and sent forth Sunday by Sunday into the villages to preach a homely gospel to the poor, and comfort to His flock.

    Little Abe Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow F. Jewell

  • I do not remember the words, but they were gross: the chief _fun_ seemed to consist in the chorus, -- a sort of _burring_ noise being made with the lips, while the doubled fists were rubbed and thumped upon the thigh, as if the cobbler's lapstone had been there.

    Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 Various

  • One of them procured somewhere an old lapstone, and breaking it into small fragments, selected one as the specimen to be subjected to the intended victim for testing.

    Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches An Autobiography Edwin Eastman

  • "Work, work, work, from weary chime to chime"; tramp behind the plough, hammer on the lapstone, beat the anvil, drive the plane, "from morn till dewy eve"; but when the dewy eve comes, ah!

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860 Various

  • At every halt of the wagons a shoemaker would be seen searching for a lapstone; a gunsmith would be mending a rifle, and weavers would be at their wheels or looms.

    The Lions of the Lord A Tale of the Old West Harry Leon Wilson 1903

Comments

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  • Fresh leather, uneven and knobbled,

    Must always be thoroughly cobbled,

    But whacking on lapstones

    Is hard on a chap’s bones

    And prospects of offspring are hobbled.

    November 30, 2018