[STONE sb. 17 f.] An uncastrated or entire horse; a stallion. Now only dial.
1600. J. Pory, trans. Leo’s Africa, III. 156. They carrie stone-horses about with them, which for a certaine fee, they will let others haue to couer their mares.
1679. Shadwell, True Widow, III. 43. I’ll hold you six to four of the Gelding against the Mare; gold to silver on the bay Stone-horse against the Flea-bitten.
1781. W. Blane, Ess. Hunting (1788), 69. The Doctor galloped his grey stone-horse forty miles on end.
1847. Nicolas, Sir C. Hatton, 340. In the 33rd Hen. VIII. an Act was passed that, every other person whose wife wore any French hood … should maintain one stone trotting horse. [The Act itself has stoned.]
b. Applied allusively to a man.
1580. Fulke, Dangerous Rock, 167. But what if your popish geldings, by neying at euery mans wife … proue them selues to be stone horses.
1640. Shirley, St. Patrick, V. i. H 2. Cannot a Mare come into the ground, but you must be leaping you stone horses.
c. attrib.
1546. in Phillipps, Wills (c. 1830), 487. A stone horsse colte.
1728. E. S[mith], Compl. Housew. (ed. 2), 243. Strain the Posset on 7 or 9 globules of Stone-Horse dung tied up in a cloth.
1836. R. Furness, Astrologer, II. Wks. (1858), 152. Bear’s grease,… fox-lungs, stone-horse warts.
