Word.ws English Dictionary

lapidaries

lapidaries is the plural of lapidary.

Meaning of lapidary

Noun

lapidary (countable and uncountable, plural lapidaries)

  1. A person who cuts and polishes, engraves, or deals in gems and precious stones.
    • An excellent lapidary ſet theſe ſtones ſure, / Doe you mark their vvaters?1624 (first performance), John Fletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife. A Comoedy. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Leonard Lichfield […], published 1640, →OCLC, Act V, scene i, page 56
  2. The field in which such a person works, a subfield of gemology.
  3. (obsolete) An expert in gems and precious stones; a connoisseur of lapidary work.
    • Yet as naked as at the firſt bluſh it [the work] ſeemeth, if it ſhall ſtande wyth your Honour his pleaſure (whome I take to be an experte Lapidarie) at vacant houres to inſearche it, you ſhall finde therein ſtones of ſuch eſtimatiõ, as are woorthy to be coucht in riche and precious collets.1577, Raphaell Holinshed; Richarde Stanyhurst [i.e., Richard Stanihurst], “The Historie of Irelande […]”, in The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I...
  4. (obsolete) Gems and precious stones collectively; jewellery.
  5. (obsolete, except historical) A treatise on (precious) stones.

See all 12 meanings of lapidary

Questions about lapidaries

What is lapidaries the plural of?
Lapidaries is the plural of lapidary.

Words near lapidaries in the dictionary

  1. lapicides
  2. Lapid
  3. lapidable
  4. lapidarian
  5. lapidarians
  6. lapidaries
  7. lapidarious
  8. lapidarist
  9. lapidarists
  10. lapidarium
  11. lapidary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lapidaries (page history and authors); lapidary (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: “lapidaries.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lapidaries. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.