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Glite Dictionary
🧽 To scrub decks 🧽 A cleaning stone
holystone

holystone

9.9
A small soft stone used to scrub wooden ship decks
  • noun
  • /ˈhoʊliˌstoʊn/
  • Archaic
: piedra de limpiar
  • Sailors once used a holystone to clean the wooden decks every morning.

Examples

  • The captain inspected the crew as they scrubbed the ship with holystones.

  • Every sailor should know how to use a holystone.

  • A worn holystone lay abandoned by the rail after the cleaning was done.

  • The crew used a holystone to clean the deck.

  • Sailors used a holystone to scrub the decks, ensuring they stayed clean and polished.

  • In the past, a holystone was an essential tool for maintaining the ship's wooden deck.

  • Every morning, the crew would reach for a holystone to clean the ship's deck thoroughly.

Surface Forms

holystone singular
holystones plural

Morphology

holystone = holy + stone (opaque) = holy + stone

Although formally a compound of 'holy' + 'stone', the specialized nautical meaning ('a sandstone block for scrubbing decks') is not inferable by an average B1 learner from the components.

Etymology

Holystone is made from holy and stone, and a helpful way to remember it is this: sailors often knelt on the soft block as they scrubbed, like they were praying, so the stone became known as a 'holy' stone. It is a soft sandstone block used to scrub the wooden decks of ships.