freestone

See also: Freestone and free-stone

English

Etymology

From free +‎ stone.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiːstəʊn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiːstoʊn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːstəʊn

Noun

freestone (countable and uncountable, plural freestones)

1. Sedimentary rock: a type of stone that is composed of small particles and easily shaped, most commonly sandstone or limestone.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:

     Mr Allworthy […] died immensely rich and built an hospital […] but had he done nothing more I should have left him to have recorded his own merit on some fair freestone over the door of that hospital.

   • 1853, John Ruskin, “IV, St. Mark's”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § XXVII, page 77:

     It might, under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in freestone.

2. (countable) A stone fruit having a stone (pit) that is relatively free of the flesh.

Coordinate terms

• (stone fruit): clingstone

Translations

sedimentary rock, most commonly sandstone or limestone

• German: Sandstein (de) m (sandstone), Kalkstein (de) m (limestone), Sedimentgestein (de) n (sedimentary rock)

stone fruit having a stone (pit) that is relatively free of the flesh

• Hungarian: magvaváló (gyümölcs)