Word.ws English Dictionary

gotten blood out of a stone

gotten blood out of a stone is the past participle of get blood out of a stone.

Meaning of get blood out of a stone

Verb

get blood out of a stone (third-person singular simple present gets blood out of a stone, present participle getting blood out of a stone, simple past got blood out of a stone, past participle (UK) got blood out of a stone or (US) gotten blood out of a stone)

  1. (idiomatic) To do something difficult, frustrating, or pointless.
    • Bradley looked at the fire, with a working face, and was silent for a while. At last he said, with what seemed an inconsistent composure of voice and feature: ‘You can’t get blood out of a stone, Riderhood.’1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 15, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC

Questions about gotten blood out of a stone

What is gotten blood out of a stone the past participle of?
Gotten blood out of a stone is the past participle of get blood out of a stone.

Words near gotten blood out of a stone in the dictionary

  1. gotten bent out of shape
  2. gotten better
  3. gotten between
  4. gotten blood from a stone
  5. gotten blood from a turnip
  6. gotten blood out of a stone
  7. gotten busy
  8. gotten by
  9. gotten by the balls
  10. gotten by with
  11. gotten changed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gotten blood out of a stone (page history and authors); get blood out of a stone (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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