millstone.
A large round stone used for grinding grain.
Meaning & usage
A large round stone used for grinding grain.
A coarse-grained sandstone used for making such stones; millstone grit.
Ellipsis of millstone around one's neck, a heavy responsibility that is difficult to bear (referring to Matthew 18:6 in the Bible).
Paying the mortgage every month is a millstone round their necks.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English mylneston, milneston, from Old English mylenstān (“millstone”), from Proto-West Germanic *mulīnu + *stain; equivalent to mill + stone; cognate with Danish møllesten, Middle Dutch molensteen (modern Dutch molensteen), West Frisian molestien, Norwegian Bokmål møllestein, Old Saxon mulinstēn (Middle Low German mȫlenstēn), Old High German mulinstein, mülstein (Middle High German mülstein, modern German Mühlstein).
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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.