Word.ws English Dictionary

handstone

handstone noun: a mano.

Noun

handstone (plural handstones)

  1. A mano.
    • Cornsilk slammed her handstone down into the meal.1997, Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear, People of the Silence: A Novel of North America's Forgotten Past, →ISBN
    • With each stroke she pressed the handstone down over the corn.2006, W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear, People of the Moon: A Novel of North America's Forgotten Past, →ISBN
  2. Any of various other handheld stone tools.
    • I believe if we refer to these poems that the accounts before us of a stone implement called the champion handstone, Leacan Laoich Milidh and Lia Lamha Laich, will closely tally with this object.1891, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy - Volume 1, page 218
    • In the record of the Ford of Comar, near Fore, in the county of Westmeath, which is supposed to have occrred in the century before the Christian era, Lohar's people all came with a champion's handstone stowed away in the hollow of their shields.1897, Sir Bertram Coghill Alan Windle, Life in Early Britain

Examples of handstone in a sentence

  • To my surprise it turned out to be a broken half of a well-crafted Indian mano, or handstone.2007, Richard Jamison, Linda Jamison, Primitive Skills and Crafts, →ISBN:
  • The simplest method is to place a handful of grain on a smooth, flat rock on the ground, and then lean forward and use your body weight to crush and grind it beneath a handstone.2014, Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch, →ISBN, page 84:
  • Each time the axe is used, hone or touch up the edge with a handstone.1948 October, “Sharpening Axes”, in Popular Science, volume 153, number 4, page 237:
  • The ease with which the handstone moves across the hide depends on the amount of connective tissue and moisture on the hide.2010, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology, →ISBN:

Forms of handstone

pluralhandstones

Origin of handstone

From hand + stone.

Questions about handstone

What does handstone mean?
Handstone means a mano.
How do you use handstone in a sentence?
To my surprise it turned out to be a broken half of a well-crafted Indian mano, or handstone.
What part of speech is handstone?
Handstone is a noun.
What is the plural of handstone?
The plural of handstone is handstones.

Words near handstone in the dictionary

  1. Handstein
  2. Handsteins
  3. handstick
  4. handsticks
  5. handstitched
  6. handstone
  7. handstones
  8. handstood
  9. handstrap
  10. handstraps
  11. handstroke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: handstone (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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Cite this entry: “handstone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/handstone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.