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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

holystone.

A piece of soft sandstone used for scouring the wooden decks of ships, usually with sand and seawater.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhəʊl.ɪ.stəʊn/UK/ˈhoʊl.i.stoʊn/US
  1. A piece of soft sandstone used for scouring the wooden decks of ships, usually with sand and seawater.

  2. A stone with a naturally-formed hole, used by Yorkshiremen for good luck.

Where this word comes from

Uncertain, but equivalent to holy + stone. As an amulet, probably from holey (“having a hole”). As a scouring stone, variously derived from holey, from the amulet, from its association with Sunday cleaning, from its users' adoption of a kneeling position similar to prayer, and (least likely) from their original provision by raiding graveyards for tombstones.

verb/ˈhəʊl.ɪ.stəʊn/UK/ˈhoʊl.i.stoʊn/US
  1. To use a holystone.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Uncertain, but equivalent to holy + stone. As an amulet, probably from holey (“having a hole”). As a scouring stone, variously derived from holey, from the amulet, from its association with Sunday cleaning, from its users' adoption of a kneeling position similar to prayer, and (least likely) from their original provision by raiding graveyards for tombstones.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.