Other forms: millstones
A millstone is a heavy round stone that grinds grain. Turn the millstone, a broken millstone, a millstone round his neck.
They work in pairs, one still and one turning, and cutting the grooves fresh was a skilled job called dressing. A millstone round the neck means a crushing burden, from a line in the gospels about what should be done to somebody who harms a child.
1nounmillstoneA heavy round stone that grinds grain.
“The miller watched the heavy millstone slowly grind the wheat into flour.”
millstone is a stone.
Old English mylenstan, mill plus stone. Mill comes from Latin molina, from molere, to grind.
Proto-Indo-European
*melh₂-
Old English
mylenstān — millstone
Middle English
mylneston
English, today
millstone
From Middle English mylneston, milneston, from Old English mylenstān (“millstone”), from Proto-West Germanic mulīnu + stain; equivalent to mill + stone; cognate with Danish møllesten, Middle Dutch molensteen (modern Dutch molensteen), West Frisian molestien, Norwegian Bokmål møllestein, Old Saxon mulinstēn (Middle Low German mȫlenstēn), Old High German mulinstein, mülstein (Middle High German mülstein, modern German Mühlstein).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA