Excellent point! I geek Proto-Uralic. As for that, the Hungarian word szikla appears to be a loanword from Slavic.
Estonian is the same as Finnish with kivi.
Very astute!
Just to note that “aggregate” as used by builders is the contrary of the scientific meaning. In geology, sandstone is an aggregate as opposed to loose sand. But in the construction trade, aggregate is loose gravel as opposed to large “dimension stone.” It’s one of those contronyms, words that mean their own antonym.
When I think about how to distinguish them, that’s what comes to my mind. Rock is an individual example, which may be of any size and may or may not be at the moment detached from the planet; rocks are made out of one or more kinds of stone.
However, I’d say “skipping stones”, not “skipping rocks”. So in English, at least, it’s not that simple. I don’t know about the other languages.
I might throw either a stone or a rock, pretty much interchangeably; but in either case to me it’s made out of stone. “Made of rock” just sounds weird to me, it’s not at all something that I’d say.
But I think this likely relates to the use of “stone” to refer to “the material that rock is made from when it has been put to human purpose”, often by mining or shaping. Maybe you don’t shape a skipping stone, but you do choose the shape to be suitable and put it to a clear and specific purpose.
I’m not claiming there’s an absolute rule here, often the countable nouns “rock” and “stone” are interchangeable or one is idiomatically preferred. But I think there’s a weak correlation that stone is preferred when there’s a specific purpose. Skipping stones, Go stones, curling stones - strong specific purpose, the word rock won’t do.
I agree with “stone is a rock that has been shaped to a purpose” definition, but would note that, humans being humans, we’d also use that word for stone that had the appearance of being worked, even if it was formed by a wholly natural process. Hence, river stones and skipping stones, and also place names like Stone Mountain or Yellowstone, which suggest that the natural beauty of such places was intentionally made by God.
The word for that is mineral.
I think the in situ vs not is the closest approximation of a very fuzzy difference. For instance, I would call the cobbles in a mountain river, or ventifacts sitting on a desert pavement, “stones” even though people had zip to do with making either.
ETA - or, what Miller just said.
Yes, it makes sense to refine the definition the way you state it - it doesn’t need to be human purpose.
But I’m not sure we need to invoke divine purpose for Yellowstone. Why isn’t it just analogous to limestone or sandstone, describing the material that constitutes the rock? (I believe it is describing yellow sandstone, in fact.)
That’s why I favor a slightly broader definition for the uncountable noun or adjective “stone”, something like “a material that rock is made from, especially when put to some purpose”.
Okay, but the existence of another word with overlapping meaning doesn’t imply anything.
We’ve noted that there seems to be much more semantic overlap and idiomatic usage for the countable nouns (rocks, stones), as opposed the uncountable noun or adjective “stone”.
I’m not saying that Yellowstone has an actual “divine purpose,” I’m just saying when they named it, strict taxological correctness on the difference between “stone” and “rock” was less important than what sounded “cool.”
(NB: This thread made me curious, so I checked: Yellowstone National Park is so named because it proved to be the headwaters of the already-named Yellowstone river. The Yellowstone river is translated from the name given to it by French trappers, Roche Jaune, which they in turn had translated from the native Hitdatsa. So, someone made the decision, when translating it into English, that “Yellowstone” sounded better in English than “Yellowrock,” and deliberately changed it from the French.)
I’m not really sold on the “stone is what rock is made out of” definition. I don’t think it fits most usages of “stone,” and feels like a special backformation to explain a couple of unusual nouns. In particular, the idea that it would refer to both the base material, and the finished product, seems counter-intuitive to me. A hunk of granite falls of the side of a mountain, and that’s a granite rock. You take it and polish it, and now it’s a granite stone. But the original was made out of granite “stone,” before it was polished? That feels off to me.
I’d suggest instead that sandstone and limestone are relatively soft minerals that often erode into unusual shapes, and so are named because, even in their natural state, they often appear to be “worked” in some way.
They don’t have overlapping meanings. Minerals are the component elements of rocks, stones are not. No geologist would say “Rocks are made up of stones” except in one specific kind. Never mind saying “this rock is made of stone”, which just sounds silly any way you slice it.
The only kind of rock you could say are made up of stones are conglomerates and breccias. In which case, the stones are the same as the cobbles or ventifacts.
That’s a fair point. We say a specific rock is limestone, but we really don’t say more generally that rock is made of stone.
A tree is made of the material wood, so I think in principle a word can work this way. I’m more convinced by your first argument - that we just don’t use the word stone in this way except in a couple of special cases.
Interesting - I can see that too. This seems more speculative, but again I don’t think your first point (which I think you have convinced me is correct) depends on this.
For what it’s worth (not much), for me it’s rock skipping.
Sure, but we’re not discussing technical terms in geology.
I agree of course that we don’t say this, but I don’t see the fact that we do not colloquially use it in all contexts as a decisive argument. When we talk about stone (uncountable noun or adjective) we are clearly talking about a material.
But you and @Miller have convinced me that limestone, sandstone etc are best just seen as special cases, and they are the only ones where we use stone to describe rock in situ. If we set them aside then I agree that the best general definition is @Miller’s - just “rock that has been put to a purpose”, including perhaps the appearance of purposeful shaping or an allusion to purpose accounting for some apparent exceptions.
The roche jaune made me think of another distinction: -stone appears in compound nouns (limestone, sandstone, flintstone, kidneystone, gallstone, cherrystone, whetstone, etc.). Does rock? All I can think of are “bedrock” and “sheetrock.”
So it may be that “stone” is “for a purpose, or apparently for a purpose; also in compounds,” while “rock” is “raw / unfinished material.”
In other words, rock = pre-stone; stone = post-rock.
But are the rolling stones hard rock?
I’m sticking with my previous definition, a stone is small enough to be picked up (and thrown), a rock is not. Googling ‘what is the difference between stone and rock?’ seems to agree with me!
So - you’re talking about the countable nouns.
But this is quite interesting, “throw a stone” vs “throw a rock”. Up until 1900, it appears that that what you say would have been quite strictly true. And can anyone think of an explanation for why both expressions dropped off sharply in frequency in this corpus between 1920 and 1980 before recovering? Just an artefact of the corpus?
[ I can’t get the link to work right - go to Google ngram and input “throw a rock” and “throw a stone” for the chart I’m talking about. ]
okay, screencapture:
“throw rocks” vs “throw stones” looks very similar.
I tried a little experiment today. I imagined a rock in my hand, then a stone.
In my mind, the rock was rough, while the stone was smooth.
This would work with stones that are smoothed by natural processes as well as human intervention. Exposed sandstone and limestone are going to be smooth.
Gemstones may be faceted nowadays, but they used to be polished.
We’re being kinda speciesist, aren’t we? Otters will select a rock, balance it upon their chest, and use it as an anvil for cracking into shell fish.
So… has that rock made the verbal leap to stone-hood?
I would say sea otters use stones, yes.