A stone. Hence to rock a person is to stone him.
1712. I lay’d a Rock in the North-east corner of the Foundation of the Meetinghouse. It was a stone I got out of the Common.—S. Sewall, ‘Diary,’ April 14. (N.E.D.)
1803. A large rock, ten feet long, and about five square, was rolled from its bed.—Mass. Spy, June 29.
1833. [In Boston] where every shop is a store, every stick a pole, every stone a rock, every stall a factory, and every goose a swan.—John Neal, ‘The Down-Easters,’ i. 26.
1835. [He] groped round in the dark till he found several little rocks, which, when placed on the edge of the tent cloth, kept it tolerably firm.—C. R. Gilman, ‘Life on the Lakes,’ i. 193 (N.Y. 1836).
1835. Old brother Smith came to my house from Bethany meeting, in a mighty bad way, with a cold, and cough, and his throat and nose all stopt up; seemed like it would ’most take his breath away, and it was dead o’ winter, and I had nothin’ but dried yerbs, such as camomile, sage, pennyryal, catmint, horehound, and sich; so I put a hot rock to his feet, and made him a large bowl o’ catmint tea, and I reckon he drank most two quarts of it through the night, and it put him in a mighty fine sweat, and loosened all the phleem, and opened all his head.—A. B. Longstreet, ‘Georgia Scenes,’ p. 211.
1836. “Salem-er! Salem-er! jacket over coat,—rock him! rock him!” cried the boys of Marblehead, “rock him round the corner.”—Phila. Public Ledger, Aug. 30.
1838. It is one of the peculiarities of the dialect of the people in the westernmost states, to call small stones rocks. And therefore they speak of throwing a rock at a bird, or at a man.—Samuel Parker, ‘Tour,’ p. 48 (Ithaca, N.Y.).
1842. The lady who mentioned this incident to me, said, “The little boy threw a rock at the president;” on which I expressed my surprise, thinking he must be an infant Hercules, to hurl a rock; when she replied, “Oh! no, it was a very small rock, and therefore the injury was very slight.” I found afterwards that it is thought indelicate to use the word stone; and that they say a house is built of rock, the streets are paved with rock, and the boys throw rocks at sparrows, and break windows by throwing rocks.—J. S. Buckingham. ‘Slave States,’ ii. 133.
1842. A Rock fell on him. A man named J. E. while working at the Summit Hill Coal Mine, had his left foot awfully crushed by a large stone.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Aug. 17.
1846. The happiness of the younger [child] was abated only by the caution which the mother occasionally gave it, “not to swaller the rocks,” which she threw from among the coffee.—E. W. Farnham, ‘Life in Prairie Land,’ p. 67.
1851. He ’gin pickin’ up rocks an’ slingin’ um at the dogs like bringer!—‘Polly Peablossom’s Wedding,’ &c., p. 52.
1853. [In the South] when man or boy, biped or quadruped, bird or beast is pelted, the unfortunate recipient of projectile favors is said to be rocked, unless indeed wood be put in requisition, and then he is chunked.—Paxton,’ A Stray Yankee in Texas,’ p. 116. (Italics in the original.)
1855. New Hampshire [said the Missourian], that’s where they grind the sheeps’ noses so as for ’em to get ’em between the rocks and feed.—Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kas., May 26.
1862. We had one of our men … decoyed into a house by the guerillas. His brains were beaten out with rocks.—Ohio State Journal, quoted in Cong. Globe, p. 3160/1.
1863. Some one told me that he threw a rock at a lame dog at Willard’s the other night, and knocked down two brigadier generals; and it was not a good night for generals, either.—Mr. James W. Nesmith of Oregon, U.S. Senate, Feb. 4: id., p. 713/3.
1879. Even the white troops were incensed against them [the negro soldiery] and often “rocked” them while walking their posts—an act for which the prisoners were blamed, and for which they were fired into on more than one occasion.—‘Southern Hist. Soc. Papers,’ vii. 397–8.
1888. His retreat was accompanied with every sort of missile—sticks, boots and rocks—but this dog, that made himself into a “greased streak of lightning,” as a colored woman described him, bounded on, untouched by the flying hail of the soldiers’ wrath.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 209.
1901. We saw that the hounds were about to overtake us, and we prepared for battle by stopping in a stony place and getting a pile of rocks ready.—W. Pittenger, ‘The Great Locomotive Chase,’ p. 329.
