Word.ws English Dictionary

rolling stone

rolling stone noun: a person who moves around a lot and never settles down; a vagrant.

Noun (1)

rolling stone (plural rolling stones)

  1. (idiomatic) A person who moves around a lot and never settles down; a vagrant.
    • Before that they had been a good deal on the move, trekking about after the white man, who was one of those rolling stones that keep going round after a soft job.1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Beach of Falesá
    • I'm sorry; I'm a bit of a rolling stone, I suppose. When Darrish came back to Netherhempsfield my job was done there. I felt uncommonly restless.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  2. (slang) A womanizer.
    • Papa was a rolling stone
      Wherever he laid his hat was his home
      And when he died, all he left us was a loan1972, Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield, “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone”
  3. A geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without animal or human intervention.
  4. A meteoroid.

Noun (2) capitalized: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone (plural Rolling Stones)

  1. Any of the members of the Rolling Stones.

Forms of rolling stone

pluralrolling stones
pluralRolling Stones

Origin of rolling stone

From the proverb a rolling stone gathers no moss.

Questions about rolling stone

What does rolling stone mean?
Rolling stone means a person who moves around a lot and never settles down; a vagrant.
What part of speech is rolling stone?
Rolling stone is a noun.
What is the plural of rolling stone?
The plural of rolling stone is rolling stones.

Words near rolling stone in the dictionary

  1. rolling spiders
  2. rolling start
  3. rolling starts
  4. rolling stock
  5. rolling stocks
  6. rolling stone
  7. rolling stones
  8. rolling stop
  9. rolling stops
  10. rolling takeoff
  11. rolling takeoffs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rolling stone (page history and authors); Rolling 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-rolling stone.ogg.

Cite this entry: “rolling stone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rolling_stone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.