STONY (stonier, stoniest)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected forms: stonier    , stoniest   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does stony mean? 

• STONY (adjective)
  The adjective STONY has 3 senses:

1. abounding in rocks or stones

2. showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings

3. hard as granite

  Familiarity information: STONY used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STONY (adjective)

Comparative: stonier   
Superlative: stoniest   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Abounding in rocks or stones

Synonyms:

bouldered; bouldery; rocky; stony

Context example:

bouldery beaches

Similar:

rough; unsmooth (having or caused by an irregular surface)

Derivation:

stone (a lump or mass of hard consolidated mineral matter)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings

Synonyms:

flint; flinty; granitic; obdurate; stony

Context example:

the child's misery would move even the most obdurate heart

Similar:

hardhearted; heartless (lacking in feeling or pity or warmth)

Derivation:

stone (a lack of feeling or expression or movement)

stone (the hard inner (usually woody) layer of the pericarp of some fruits (as peaches or plums or cherries or olives) that contains the seed)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Hard as granite

Synonyms:

granitelike; granitic; rocklike; stony

Context example:

a granitic fist

Similar:

hard (resisting weight or pressure)

 Context examples 

We had had no food for many hours, and were very weary with the stony and irregular journey, but our nerves were too strung to allow us to halt.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

For our path in life, my Dora, said I, warming with the subject, is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I will melt the stony hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Pertaining to the petrous or hard, stony portion of the temporal bone.

(Petrous, NCI Thesaurus)

From the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of gravel was dislodged and fell rattling and bounding through the trees.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I added, “that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance, called iron, at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways, on which we often travelled.”

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

At last the guard returned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the "stony street" of L-.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)