Stony

How to spell stony

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stony

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stony mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with or full of stones, or resembling stone in being hard and unfeeling.

Stony in a sentence

• The stony path made the climb difficult for the hikers.

• Her request was met with a stony silence from the committee.

Where does stony come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English adjective stanig, built on stan, the native Anglo-Saxon word for 'stone', plus the common adjective ending -ig that survives today as -y. The root stan goes back to a shared Germanic ancestor, which is why Dutch has 'steen' and German has 'Stein' for the same hard mineral lump. From its earliest use the word described ground full of stones, but English speakers soon extended it to anything resembling stone: cold, hard, and unmoving, as in a 'stony silence' or a 'stony stare'. The spelling trap is small but real, because the final silent 'e' of 'stone' is dropped before -y, leaving 'stony' rather than the tempting 'stoney'. That dropped 'e' follows the regular English rule for adding -y to a word ending in a silent 'e'.

How the word is built

• ston- (from Old English stan, stone)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'having the quality of')