Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various hard, dark-colored rocks, especially basalt and chert.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
whin .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A provincial name given in England to basaltic rocks, and applied by miners to other kind of dark-colored unstratified rocks which resist the point of the pick. -- for example, to masses of chert.
Whin-dikes , andwhin-sills , are names sometimes given to veins or beds of basalt.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any hard dark-coloured
rock .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any of various hard colored rocks (especially rocks consisting of chert or basalt)
Etymologies
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Examples
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From this outlet there is a continual descent towards Loch Eitive, and from hence the river Awe pours out its current in a furious stream, foaming over a bed broken with holes, and cumbered with masses of granite and whinstone.
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Below this mass lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like whinstone.
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The stones and rocks were generally hard whinstone, or freestone, the former in large masses; the beach, of pebbles of all colours and kinds, from quartz to sandstone.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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Granite, coarse porphyry, freestone, and whinstone were frequently found on the same hill, and the beds of the streams were of every variety of pebble.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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Granite and a hard whinstone were the most predominant among the stones; small pieces of quartz, and loose rotten slates covered the tracks, on which grew some of the finest stringy bark trees I ever saw.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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The roads were excellent, and made upon the MacAdam principle, whinstone having been brought for the purpose from the distance of several miles.
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The base of these hills was of close-grained white-coloured granite, or whinstone: the summits of good freestone: on the sides several good pieces of iron ore were picked up.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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The roads were excellent, and made upon the MacAdam principle, whinstone having been brought for the purpose from the distance of several miles.
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The rocks were of a very hard whinstone, the stratum nearly perpendicular, or rather standing up in regular basaltic figures, similar to those on Loadstone Hill.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation: an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone.
Wuthering Heights 2002
hernesheir commented on the word whinstone
(n): locally in England, any of various kinds of unusually hard, resistant basaltic rock, much used for road mending. Cf. whin.
January 16, 2009