Word.ws English Dictionary

stone the crows

stone the crows interjection: generalized expression of surprise or amazement, or just for emphasis.

Interjection

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, colloquial) Generalized expression of surprise or amazement, or just for emphasis.
    • “Why, stone the crows! I′ll look yous up,” sez ′e. / “I need some friends: I ain′t got wife nor chick.”1924, C. J. Dennis, “Rose Of Spadgers”, in Sentimental Bloke and Other Verses, published 1988, page 86
    • The he pinched himself to make sure he was really awake, "Stone the crows!" he said softly. "Stone the crows!"1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 141
    Synonyms:
    holy cow, stone me

Examples of stone the crows in a sentence

  • So I says to meself: stone the crows, I′m a doomed man, might as well shoot through.1988, Janette Turner Hospital, Charades, page 63:
  • ‘Stone the crows,’ I whispered in sheer relief.2008, Norman Jorgensen, Jack′s Island, ReadHowYouWant, published 2011, page 170:

Synonyms of stone the crows

Origin of stone the crows

Originally Australian English of 1910s, "referring to the former occupation of watching over cornfields and stoning crows that attempt to plunder the crop."

Questions about stone the crows

What does stone the crows mean?
Stone the crows means generalized expression of surprise or amazement, or just for emphasis.
How do you use stone the crows in a sentence?
So I says to meself: stone the crows, I′m a doomed man, might as well shoot through.
What part of speech is stone the crows?
Stone the crows is an interjection.

Words near stone the crows in the dictionary

  1. stone sub
  2. stone subeditor
  3. stone subeditors
  4. stone subs
  5. stone tape theory
  6. stone the crows
  7. Stone Town
  8. stone veneer
  9. stone wall
  10. stone walled
  11. stone walling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stone the crows (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-stone the crows.ogg.

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