Talk:stone

UK gloss?
I don't think we need "UK" on stone. This measurement was surely used around the world in various places. I know it was in Australia until about 1972 from memory. Now these measurements are known as "imperial" to differentiate them from "metric".

Also I don't believe it's correct to say that the plural of "stone" is "stone" but rather that it is "invariant".

Also this entry cleary shows a single word which is used as both a "countable noun" and an "uncountable" or "mass noun". I think we need a good way to include such characteristics in word definitions much as we use m and f for languages with genders.

Hippietrail 13:39, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I read "UK" as meaning Commonwealth, as opposed to US. But I agree it may be misleading.


 * Regarding the plural, I think "stone" truly is the plural for the measurement. If I weigh 140 pounds (plural), I weigh 10 stone (plural).  It's when the measurements are used as adjectives that they take the invariant form:  a 140 pound man is a 10 stone man.


 * And I agree it would be nice to have a countable/uncountable indication, but I don't have any good ideas of how to do it at the moment.
 * -- Ortonmc 16:36, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sack
The sack is widely reported on the web as containing 13 tods or quarters, or 26 stone, or 2 weys or weighs of 6.5 tods, etc.

Of course, considering the extreme simplicity of the whole system, it may be that James Edwin Thorold Rogers got it wrong, or that the true definition of sack as 13 stone got lost during the twentieth century, but I consider it more likely that a wiki author made the mistake. I'm afraid that quite a few pages on the web have the same quotation, containing the same error. I attribute this the copying of an initial mistake.

I first took the liberty of changing the quotation, but I realise now I shouldn't have done it without checking first what is really written in that book. Does somebody have access to an actual copy? I doubt that this is found in any library... Ratfox 04:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Dramatic developments! The book of James Edwin Thorold Rogers is now available on the web thanks to Google books. The citation is correct. However, the Penny Cyclopaedia, also available on Google books, stated barely 39 years earlier that the sack is equivalent to 13 tods, not stones. Was the Penny Cyclopaedia right? Was James Edwin Thorold Rogers? The first prevailed, but who can tell what is the TRUTH anymore? Watch this space for more. Ratfox 19:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Etymology
All citations are logical; but STEAR (stear, tallow)[3] is the misfit, both as pseudo-scientifically illogical and as in meaning. Werdna Yrneh Yarg 22:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Andrew

This is where Werdna Yrneh Yarg doesn't know what he is writing about! He is ignorant that the final 'r' and 'n' were sometimes interchangeable in certain ancient languages. This is an example of this; so STEAR or STEAN (soap), because of its shape, can apply to 'stone'. Therefore the example 'stear' under 'STONE' is admissable![4]

[0] means 'Absolutely not; [1] means 'Exceedingly unlikely'; [2] means 'Very dubious'; [3] means 'Questionable'; [4] means 'Possible'; [5] means 'Probable'; [6] means 'Likely'; [7] means 'Most Likely' or *Unattested; [8] means 'Attested'; [9] means 'Obvious' - only used for close matches within the same language or dialect, at linkable periods.

Andrew H. Gray 21:49, 4 November 2015 (UTC) Andrew (talk)

RFV discussion: September 2011–March 2012
The definition is "Complete, absolute, of the highest degree" but I think that's only an adverb. You might say "stone free" but "free" is an adjective, and you wouldn't say "stone freedom" or "stone happiness". "Stone deafness" maybe... Fugyoo 17:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think stone deafness is meant to imply deafness comparable to that of a stone. However, there are numerous instances of the term being used in combination with "fox":
 * 2002, Jocko Weyland, The Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World, p. 71:
 * Ellen Berryman is a stone fox and I wouldn't mind meeting her.
 * 2004, Lisa Scottoline, Everywhere That Mary Went, p. 43:
 * Even the ugly headset doesn't mar her good looks. Lustrous red hair, a perfect nose, the sexiest pout in legal history. Brent is right. Delia is a stone fox.
 * 2008, Lorna Landvik, The View from Mount Joy, p. 3:
 * Standing at the urinal, I read the first graffiti to mar the freshly scrubbed wall or the school bathroom: Viet Nam sucks and Kristi Casey is a stone fox.
 * I don't know of any collocations other than "fox" with which this term is used in this way. bd2412 T 22:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm missing something (not too unlikely) stone fox looks like an idiom to me, rather than a sense of stone. --Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Some other collocations of stone that need to be encompassed by our definitions include (adjective and adverb, stone cold sober, stone cold dead), stone sober, stone drunk, stone blind, stone crazy, stone dead, stone silent.  Clearly, it is sometimes an intensifying degree adverb, probably emerging from similes like silent/dead/blind/cold/sober as a stone, each of which were worded in a way common in English: "N Adj", meaning "Adj like a(n) N" or "as Adj as a(n) N". "Ice cold", "fire engine red", "snow white", "rock solid" are among the more common examples, but I don't think that most of such constructions are truly idiomatic. In any event the construction is highly productive. IMHO, it is only in those cases for which the simile interpretation seems unsustainable that one could say that "stone" has become an adverb. DCDuring TALK  15:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Resolved, AFAICT. - -sche (discuss) 22:10, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Several trucks rushed by a few stone's throws away from us
is stone uncountable in stone's throw? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)


 * No. "Stone's throw" means "throw of a stone" (singular, countable) like "cat's tail" means "tail of a cat". Equinox ◑ 17:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)