stone
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "stone", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "stone" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "stone" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
stone is aEnglishnoun. It means: A hard earthen substance that can form rocks; especially, such substance when regarded as a building material. Pronounced /stəʊ̯n/. It ranks #1,676 in English word frequency. Often confused with stop and stun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stone |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stəʊ̯n/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,676 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stone is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stəʊ̯n/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,676 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for stone, with forms such as "sotne", "sstone", and "stnoe". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "stop", "stun", "stow", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English ston, stone, stan, from Old English stān, from Proto-West Germanic *stain, from Proto-Germanic *stainaz (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *steyh₂- (“to stiffen”). Cognates Cognate with Scots stane (“stone”), Yola sthoan (“stone”), Nort… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is stone, spelled S-T-O-N-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A hard earthen substance that can form rocks; especially, such substance when regarded as a building material.
- 2A piece of such material: a rock or a pebble.
- 3A gemstone, a jewel, especially a diamond.
- 4A unit of weight equal to 14 pounds (≈6.3503 kilograms), formerly used for various commodities (wool, cheese, etc.), but now principally used for personal weight. Abbreviated as st.
- 5The central part of some fruits, particularly drupes; consisting of the seed and a hard endocarp layer.
- 6A hard, stone-like deposit.
- 7A playing piece made of any hard material, used in various board games such as backgammon and go.
- 8A dull light grey or beige, like that of some stones.
- 9A 42-pound, precisely shaped piece of granite with a handle attached, which is bowled down the ice.
- 10A monument to the dead; a gravestone or tombstone.
- 11A mirror, or its glass.
- 12A testicle.
- 13A stand or table with a smooth, flat top of stone, commonly marble, on which to arrange the pages of a book, newspaper, etc. before printing.
Etymology
From Middle English ston, stone, stan, from Old English stān, from Proto-West Germanic *stain, from Proto-Germanic *stainaz (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *steyh₂- (“to stiffen”). Cognates Cognate with Scots stane (“stone”), Yola sthoan (“stone”), North Frisian stean, stian, stiin, stiinj (“stone”), Saterland Frisian Steen (“stone”), West Frisian stien (“stone”), Alemannic German Steei (“rock, stone”), Bavarian Staa (“rock, stone”), Central Franconian Steen, Stään (“stone”), Dutch steen (“stone”), German Stein (“rock, stone”), German Low German Steen, Stein (“stone”), Luxembourgish Steen (“stone”), Vilamovian śtan (“stone”), Yiddish שטיין (shteyn, “stone”), Danish and Swedish sten (“stone”), Elfdalian stien (“stone”), Faroese steinur (“stone”), Gutnish stain (“rock, stone”), Icelandic steinn (“rock, stone”), Norwegian Bokmål stein, sten (“stone”), Norwegian Nynorsk steidn, stein (“stone”), Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍃 (stains, “stone”). Compare also Ancient Greek στία (stía, “pebble”), στέαρ (stéar, “tallow”), Lithuanian sténgti (“to be able, make an effort; to oppose”), Russian стена́ (stená, “wall”), Albanian shtëng (“hardened or pressed matter”), Sanskrit स्तिया (stiyā, “still or stagnant water”). Doublet of stain, stean, and stein.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sotne,sstone,stnoe,stoen,stonne,sttone,tsone
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for stone
Misspelling Variants of "stone"
Frequency rank: #1,676 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: