Other forms: sandstones
Sandstone is a warm-coloured rock formed from pressed sand. Red sandstone, a sandstone wall, quarried sandstone.
It is grains of sand cemented together over time, and the cement decides the colour — iron gives the reds and yellows. It is soft enough to cut easily, which is why so much of Britain's older building is sandstone, and soft enough to weather badly, which is why so much of it needs replacing. Note that sandstone is porous, so it holds water and makes an aquifer.
1nounsandstoneA rock formed from pressed sand.
“The sandstone weathers about a millimetre a decade.”
sandstone is a rock.
Old English sandstan is sand plus stone, and every Germanic language builds it the same way. It is one of the plainest compounds in the language.
Proto-West Germanic
*sandastain — sandstone, chisel, gravel
Old English
*sandstān
Middle English
sandston
English, today
sandstone
From Middle English sandston, from Old English sandstān, from Proto-West Germanic sandastain (“sandstone, chisel, gravel”), equivalent to sand + stone. Cognate with West Frisian sânstien (“sandstone”), stq Soundsteen (“sandstone”), Dutch zandsteen (“sandstone”), German Low German Sandsteen (“sandstone”), German Sandstein (“sandstone”), Danish sandsten (“sandstone”), Swedish sandsten (“sandstone”), Icelandic sandsteinn (“sandstone”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA