Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Concreted earthy or mineral matter; rock.
  • noun Such concreted matter of a particular type. Often used in combination.
  • noun A small piece of rock.
  • noun Rock or a piece of rock shaped or finished for a particular purpose, especially.
  • noun A piece of rock that is used in construction.
  • noun A gravestone or tombstone.
  • noun A grindstone, millstone, or whetstone.
  • noun A milestone or boundary.
  • noun A gem or precious stone.
  • noun Something, such as a hailstone, resembling a stone in shape or hardness.
  • noun Botany The hard covering enclosing the seed in certain fruits, such as the cherry, plum, or peach.
  • noun Medicine A mineral concretion in an organ, such as the kidney or gallbladder, or other body part; a calculus.
  • noun A unit of weight in Great Britain, 14 pounds (6.4 kilograms).
  • noun Printing A table with a smooth surface on which page forms are composed.
  • adjective Relating to or made of stone.
  • adjective Made of stoneware or earthenware.
  • adjective Complete; utter. Often used in combination.
  • adverb Completely; utterly.
  • transitive verb To hurl or throw stones at, especially to kill with stones.
  • transitive verb To remove the stones or pits from.
  • transitive verb To furnish, fit, pave, or line with stones.
  • transitive verb To rub on or with a stone in order to polish or sharpen.
  • transitive verb Sports To block a shot taken by (an opponent). Used of a goalie.
  • transitive verb Obsolete To make hard or indifferent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An imitation atone made up of red, yellow, blue, and green glass in small particles, which is cut in brilliant form and extensively sold by Armenian and Syrian dealers.
  • To throw stones at; pelt with stones.
  • To make like stone; harden.
  • To free from stones, as fruit.
  • To provide or fit with stones, as by lining, walling, or facing: as, to stone a well or a road.
  • In leather manufacturing, to work (the leather) with a stock-stone to reduce it to uniform thickness, stretch it, and make it smooth-grained.
  • noun A piece of rock of small or moderate size.
  • noun The hard material of which rock consists: in contradistinction to metal, wood, etc.
  • noun A piece of rock of a determined size, shape, or quality, or used for a defined purpose: as, a grindstone; a hearthstone; an altar-stone.
  • noun A gravestone; a monument or memorial tablet.
  • noun A millstone.
  • noun Iu printing, an imposing-stone.
  • noun In glass manufacturing, a fiattening-stone.
  • noun A precious stone; a gem. See precious.
  • noun A small, hard, rounded object resembling a stone or pebble: as, a hail-stone; a gall-stone; an ear-stone.
  • noun The glass of a mirror; a mirror of crystal.
  • noun A common measure of weight in use throughout the northwest and central countries of Europe, but varying much in different countries.
  • noun Synonyms and
  • noun See rock.
  • Made of stone: as, a stone house; a stone wall.
  • Made of stoneware: as, a stone jar; a stone mug.

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

  • noun Concreted earthy or mineral matter; also, any particular mass of such matter
  • noun A precious stone; a gem.
  • noun Something made of stone. Specifically:
  • noun obsolete The glass of a mirror; a mirror.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English stān; see stāi- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English stan, ston, from Old English stān, from Proto-Germanic *stainaz (cf. Dutch steen, German Stein), from Proto-Indo-European *st(y)oy- (compare Latin stiria ‘icicle’, Russian стена (stená, "wall"), Ancient Greek στῖον (stîon, "pebble"), stear ‘tallow’, Albanian shtëng ("hardened or pressed matter"), Sanskrit styāyate ‘it hardens’).

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word stone.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Yes, paper can be made from stone. From the list tree-free-paper-alternatives
    See http://www.viastone.com

    July 8, 2015

  • Why is the link to my list not working? I used curly braces. I included the list with their original hyphens and then with all hyphens. The result: rhinos with red toenails 404.

    July 8, 2015

  • Weird. Is it because tree-free-paper-alternatives already contains a hyphen?

    July 8, 2015

  • Oh! I got it to work just now--but I copied "tree-free-paper-alternatives" from the URL at the top.

    July 8, 2015