stoned
/stoʊnd/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.48 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
simple past and past participle of stone
adj
Example Sentences
- "STONED: drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world."
- "'He could be a mean drunk,' said saxophonist Artie Drelinger. '[…] Booze was his priority, and when he was stoned he could be a son of a bitch.'"
- "We got stoned and ate four bags of potato chips."
- "Riccio nodded toward a boy across the floor and said, “See that kid? He’s on dope.” The boy was standing against a wall, staring vacantly at the dancers, his face fixed in a gentle, faraway smile. Every few seconds, he would wipe his nose with the back of his hand. “Man, that Jo-Jo!” Benny said. “He’s stoned all the time.” “What’s he on—horse?” Riccio asked, meaning heroin. “Who knows with that creep?” Benny said. I asked Benny if any special kind of boy went in for dope. “The creeps,” he said. “You know, the goofballs.” He searched for a word. “The weak kids. Like Jo-Jo. There ain’t nothing the guys can’t do to him. Last week, we took his pants off and made him run right in the middle of the street without them.”"
- "Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars / Out here we is stoned, immaculate"
- "And me, I'm flying in my taxi / Taking tips, and getting stoned / I go flying so high, when I'm stoned"
Etymology
From Middle English stoned (simple past) and stoned, istoned (past participle), equivalent to stone + -ed. The etymology for the sense of "exhilarated, intoxicated by substances", which originated in American English in the mid-20th century, is not fully clear. It could be derived from stone drunk, a common slang expression from the mid-19th to early-20th century. It is more frequently theorized to be a phono-semantic matching of Italian-American slang stunod (“dazzled, stupid”), from Italian stonato (“out of tune, off-key”). In 1952, Life Magazine listed it in a glossary of bop musician slang, in the sense of "drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world" (see quote). This could lend further credence to the idea of the word originating from a musical term.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: stoned, stonato
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /stoʊnd/
- British English: /stəʊnd/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more stoned (comparative)
most stoned (superlative)