Word.ws English Dictionary

stone-still

stone-still adjective: as still as a stone; perfectly still or silent; motionless.

Adjective

stone-still (comparative more stone-still, superlative most stone-still)

  1. As still as a stone; perfectly still or silent; motionless
    • Alas, what need you be so boisterous-rough? / I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. / For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!written 1594-96, William Shakespeare, King John
    • She lay stone-still in a trance of terror.1859, George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Adverb

stone-still (comparative more stone-still, superlative most stone-still)

  1. In a stone-still manner
    • Around 6:00 A.M., after an entire night of abuse, the omega walked to the ridge and stood stone-still.2011, Jean Craighead George, How to Talk to Your Animals

Examples of stone-still in a sentence

  • She lay / Stone-still, and the long darkness flow’d away / With muffled pulses.1862, George Meredith, Modern Love (sonnet I):
  • Sekander stared out of the window with a stone-still face.2011, Suraya Sadeed, Damien Lewis, Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse:
  • She remained stone-still, ready for anything, sending her heightened senses in search of who or what was encroaching on her personal space.2015, Sara Humphreys, Vampires Never Cry Wolf:

Forms of stone-still

Adjective
comparativemore stone-still
superlativemost stone-still
Adverb
comparativemore stone-still
superlativemost stone-still

Origin of stone-still

From Middle English stone-stille, stonstyll, stonstyl, stane still, equivalent to stone + still (adjective).

From Middle English ston-stille, stone-stille, stonstil, stane-still, equivalent to stone + still (adverb).

Questions about stone-still

What does stone-still mean?
Stone-still means as still as a stone; perfectly still or silent; motionless.
How do you use stone-still in a sentence?
She lay / Stone-still, and the long darkness flow’d away / With muffled pulses.
What part of speech is stone-still?
Stone-still can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near stone-still in the dictionary

  1. stone-pastes
  2. stone-rag
  3. stone-raw
  4. stone-snipe
  5. stone-snipes
  6. stone-still
  7. stone-throwing
  8. stone-wall
  9. Stone-Weierstrass theorem
  10. Stone-Čech compactification
  11. Stone-Čech compactifications

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stone-still (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: “stone-still.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stone-still. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.