stoned
UK/stəʊnd//stoʊnd/
stoned is the simple past and past participle of stone.
Adjective
stoned (comparative more stoned, superlative most stoned)
- Containing stones.
- Having had the stones removed.
- Drunk; intoxicated by alcohol.
- STONED: drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world.1952 September 29, “"BOP VOCABULARY" section, inside of "That Crazy Bop Joke Craze"”, in LIFE Magazine, New York, U.S., page 67
- 'He could be a mean drunk,' said saxophonist Artie Drelinger. '[…] Booze was his priority, and when he was stoned he could be a son of a bitch.'2002, Frederick J. Spencer, Jazz and Death: Medical Profiles of Jazz Greats
- Synonyms:
- blotto, ebrious, paralytic, wasted, Adrian Quist, adrip, aled up, all mops and brooms, arseholed, a sheet in the wind
- High on drugs, especially cannabis.
- We got stoned and ate four bags of potato chips.
- Riccio nodded toward a boy across the floor and said, “See that kid? He’s on dope.” The boy was standing against a wall, staring vacantly at the dancers, his face fixed in a gentle, faraway smile. Every few seconds, he would wipe his nose with the back of his hand.
“Man, that Jo-Jo!” Benny said....1957 September 13, Walter Bernstein, “The Cherubs Are Rumbling”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 18 Feb 2024
- Exhilarated; intoxicated by something (such as love) other than drugs or alcohol.
- "I am stoned on Jesus! He turns me on and gives me something drugs never could!"1972, John W. Drakeford, Children of Doom: A Sobering Look at the Commune Movement, Nashville: Broadman Press
- I had told them my sailing plans—a few voyages and then Palmyra—but learned almost nothing about them except they were stoned on life. They were so in love with each other and so enamored with their six-month-old baby, […]2014, Susan Scott, Call Me Captain: A Memoir of a Woman at Sea, University of Hawaii Press, →ISBN, page 112
Meaning of stone
Verb
stone (third-person singular simple present stones, present participle stoning, simple past and past participle stoned)
- To pelt with stones; especially, to kill by pelting with stones.
- stoned to death
- To wall or wall up with stones.
- […] and since it was a rule of the French troops not to be a burden on the people along their route it could be that the advance guard dug and stoned the well for the troop's own special use.1974, Mathias Peter Harpin, Prophets in the wilderness: a history of Coventry, Rhode Island
- Synonyms:
- stean
- To remove a stone from (fruit etc.).
- To form a stone during growth, with reference to fruit etc.
- Especially of cannabis or narcotics: To intoxicate. (Usually in passive)
- To do nothing, to stare blankly into space and not pay attention when relaxing or when bored.
- I was stoning the whole of today.2003, Roger, Joy, Vera and Amanda Loh, Facts about Singapore: Differences between Ohio and Singapore
Synonyms of stoned
- blotto
- ebrious
- paralytic
- wasted
- Adrian Quist
- adrip
- aled up
- all mops and brooms
- arseholed
- a sheet in the wind
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of stoned
| comparative | more stoned |
|---|---|
| superlative | most stoned |
Origin of stoned
From Middle English stoned (simple past) and stoned, istoned (past participle), equivalent to stone + -ed. The etymology for the sense of "exhilarated, intoxicated by substances", which originated in American English in the mid-20th century, is not fully clear. It could be derived from stone drunk, a common slang expression from the mid-19th to early-20th century. It is more frequently theorized to be a phono-semantic matching of Italian-American slang stunod (“dazzled, stupid”), from Italian stonato (“out of tune, off-key”). In 1952, Life Magazine listed it in a glossary of bop musician slang, in the sense of "drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world" (see quote). This could lend further credence to the idea of the word originating from a musical term.
Words formed from stoned
Words that rhyme with stoned
Questions about stoned
- What does stoned mean?
- Stoned means containing stones.
- What is stoned the simple past and past participle of?
- Stoned is the simple past and past participle of stone.
- What part of speech is stoned?
- Stoned is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce stoned?
- Stoned is pronounced /stəʊnd/ (UK).
Words near stoned in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stoned (page history and authors); 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-us-stoned.ogg.
Cite this entry: “stoned.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stoned. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.