Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small stone, especially one worn smooth by erosion.
  • noun Clear colorless quartz; rock crystal.
  • noun A lens made of such quartz.
  • noun Geology A rock fragment between 4 and 64 millimeters (0.16 and 2.51 inches) in diameter, especially one that has been naturally rounded.
  • noun An irregularly rough, grainy surface, as on leather or paper.
  • transitive verb To pave with pebbles.
  • transitive verb To impart an irregularly rough, grainy surface to (leather or paper).
  • transitive verb To pelt with pebbles.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To assume a prominent grain, or a rough or ribbed appearance, as leather when treated by the process called pebbling.
  • To prepare, as leather, so as to cause the grain to become prominent and to present a roughened or ribbed appearance. See pebbling.
  • noun In Australia, a hard, obstinate person; a tough; also said of animals.
  • noun A small rounded stone.
  • noun In jewelry, an agate. Scotch agates are commonly known as Scotch pebbles.
  • noun A transparent and colorless rook-crystal used as a substitute for glass in spectacles, or a fine kind of glass so used.
  • noun Pebble-leather.
  • noun A large size of gunpowder; pebble-powder.
  • noun One of several different pyralid, tortricid, and bombycid moths: an English collectors’ name.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To grain (leather) so as to produce a surface covered with small rounded prominences.
  • noun A small roundish piece of stone; especially, a stone worn and rounded by the action of water; a pebblestone.
  • noun Transparent and colorless rock crystal.
  • noun slow-burning gunpowder, in large cubical grains.
  • noun varieties of quartz, as agate, chalcedony, etc., obtained from cavities in amygdaloid.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small stone
  • noun geology A particle from 4 to 64 mm in diameter, following the Wentworth scale
  • noun curling A small droplet of water intentionally sprayed on the ice that cause irregularities on the surface.
  • verb To pave with pebbles.
  • verb curling To deposit water droplets on the ice. e.g. to pebble the ice between games.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small smooth rounded rock

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pobble, pibel, pebul, from Old English papol- (as in papolstān, pebblestone).]

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Examples

  • Listed below are links to weblogs that reference When a pebble is a jewel:

    When a pebble is a jewel Maxine 2008

  • ” Like most four-year-old boys, George left his house like a pebble from a slingshot, careening off parked cars, brownstone gates, fences placed to protect young trees (apparently not just from urinating dogs), and pedestrians prickly from too little coffee or too much workaday dread.

    Excerpt: The Whole World Over by Julia Glass 2006

  • Sorting was like beachcombing on a shore where every pebble is precious and time is boundless.

    Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos: Questions 2004

  • In such a rock crusher the life of a pebble is short.

    The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900

  • [Page 300] if it were a specimen of some 'tesselated pavement' fit for a museum, and not a pebble is to be found in its natural state.

    Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle 1892

  • The X360 weighs 2.8 pounds and has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble" - style keyboard.

    Internet News 2008

  • The X360 weighs 2.8 pounds and has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble" - style keyboard.

    Internet News 2008

  • The X360 weighs 2.8 pounds and has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble" - style keyboard.

    InternetNews Realtime News for IT Managers 2008

  • The X360 weighs 2.8 pounds and has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble" - style keyboard.

    The Globe and Mail - Technology RSS feed 2008

  • The X360 weighs 2.8 pounds and has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble" - style keyboard.

    Yahoo! News: Technology News 2008

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    January 25, 2007

  • hey zero, what was that other line from that you just had up for pebble?

    January 25, 2007