rocks and stones

[Dennis R. Preston]

I cannot yield to to larry's identification of stone as the substance
and hence the unmarked form.I suspect a dialect difference on just
this matter. Several of his no-good forms (rock house, rock wall) are
OK by me, tough one must be careful of relatively frozen collocations
in such considerations. For example, I have rock walls and rock
fences, but I have the metaphoric verb "stonewall."

dInIs


At 12:25 PM -0500 11/19/03, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>It is good that Michael agrees with me, but bad that he is a feature
>promulgater [+/- smooth] would do.
>
>dInIs (a friend of Occam)
>
Or perhaps [+/- rough]?  Stone seems more basic, in that it refers
also to the substance--stone (#rock) houses/walls, hearts turned to
stone (#rock).  (Yes, rock garden, but those are gardens with rocks,
not gardens made of rock).  So a rough thingie made of stone is a
rock, otherwise (i.e. in the elsewhere condition) you've got (a)
stone.

And then there's the question of whether size matters (and where).
Interestingly the OED does distinguish the British use (which
maintains a distinction) from the U.S. (which neutralizes it),
although it implies that the Brits have been infected by our
sloppiness:

I. 1.
a. A large rugged mass of stone forming a cliff, crag, or natural
prominence on land or in the sea.

b. A large detached mass of stone; a boulder; also (orig. U.S.), a
stone of any size. Also freq., a stone used as a projectile.