Also WHIMSTONE. [f. WHIN2 + STONE sb.] A name for various very hard dark-colored rocks or stones, as greenstone, basalt, chert, or quartzose sandstone.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, VI. Prol. 39. On raggit rolkis of hard harsk quhyne stane.
1763. W. Lewis, Phil. Comm. Techn., 441. The stone called whynn stone, with which some of the streets of London have been lately paved.
1791. Beddoes, in Phil. Trans., LXXXI. 65. Whether the basales proceeds southward … till it join the Elvin or whinstone, and granite of Devonshire and Cornwall.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. The., 66. The strata are intersected by veins of whinstone, porphyry and granite.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Builder, 289. In Scotland, whole towns are built of whin-stone.
1879. G. Macdonald, Sir Gibbie, xxi. Granite red and grey, blue whinstone, yellow ironstone, were all mingled.
b. A boulder or slab of this rock. Often used fig. or allusively.
a. 1585. Montgomerie, Flyting, 744. Except I wer to force the with quhin staneis.
1803. Gazetteer Scot., s.v. Girvan, The coast is generally flat and sandy, interspersed with large whinstones, with which most of the houses are built.
1816. Scott, Bl. Dwarf, xi. The despair he felt … was … such as would have melted the heart of a whinstane. Ibid. (1827), Jrnl., 15 Aug., in Lockhart. You might have been as well employed in buttering a whin-stone.
1865. G. Macdonald, Alec Forbes, xiv. He’s a blue whunstane that’s hard to dress.
1899. Crockett, Kit Kennedy, xlvi. An old man … that you told me was breaking whin-stones on the roadside.
c. attrib. Pertaining to or consisting of whinstone; also fig. hard, tough.
1834. H. Miller, Scenes & Leg., xi. (1857), 167. The castle—a grey whinstone building.
1874. Green, Short Hist., i. § 3. 25. The scant herbage scarce veils the whinstone rock.
1910. J. Buchan, Prester John, v. 99. I haven’t your whinstone nerve and total lack of imagination.
