stony
part of speech
adjective (stony, stonier, stoniest)
meaning for a pupil
1) Stony means full of stones or covered with stones. tree →
2) Stony means hard like stone. tree →
3) A stony look, face or silence is cold and shows no kind feeling. tree →
sense in the lessons
In geography and nature lessons it describes ground, beaches and paths: «a stony beach», «stony soil». In stories a «stony stare» or «stony silence» tells the reader a person is angry, cold or unforgiving. Phrases: «stony ground», «stony silence», «stony-faced», «fall on stony ground» (an idea nobody accepts).
examples
- We walked along the stony beach in our sandals. tree →
- The farmer could not grow much in the stony field. tree →
- The path up the hill was steep and stony. tree →
- Mum gave me a stony look when I came home late. tree →
- There was a stony silence after the teacher asked who broke the window. tree →
- The headteacher listened stony-faced. tree →
- My idea fell on stony ground; nobody liked it. tree →
- Plants with long roots can live in stony soil. tree →
- While the donkeys galloped along the stony road, the Marionette fancied he heard a very quiet voice whispering to him: tree →
note
Spelled with -y after «stone» minus «e»: stone → stony (not «stoney», though that spelling is sometimes seen). Comparative stonier, superlative stoniest. «Stony» about a face is not about real stone; it is a figure of speech. «Stone-cold» and «stony broke» (UK, informal: with no money at all) are related phrases.
In the corpora
- Some asteroids are dark and rich in carbon, some are stony, and a few are mostly metal, like the asteroid Psyche.
- Not all deserts are hot or sandy: most are rocky or stony, and Antarctica is the largest desert of all.
- Most deserts are rocky or stony rather than covered in sand dunes.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «stony» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.