hearthstone

plural hearthstones · alternative hearth-stone

1. A flat stone used to form a hearth.

   I took a seat at the end of the hearthstone opposite that towards which my landlord advanced […].

   1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter I, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC

2. broadlyfigurativelyThe fireside, home life.

   I am going to my own hearth-stone, / Bosomed in yon green hills alone,

   1846, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Good-Bye, line 15

   2 more examples

   The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land

   1861, Abraham Lincoln, First inaugural address

   The denominational relations of a household will shape the future political positions of the young men growing around the hearth-stone, just as they did those of their fathers

   1876, Richard J. Hinton, English Radical Leaders, page 55

3. A soft kind of stone used to whiten doorsteps, scour floors, etc.

   Lastly, there is the hearth-stone barrow, piled up with hearth-stone, Bath-brick and lumps of whiting

   1861, Henry Mayhew, London labour and the London Poor, volume 1, page 29

present singular third person hearthstones · participle present hearthstoning · participle past hearthstoned · past hearthstoned · alternative hearth-stone

1. transitiveTo scour, as a floor, with hearthstone.

   We've a woman come in twice a week, to scrub, and red-brick, and hearthstone, and black-lead, and the rest we manage ourselves.

   1876, Hallberger's Illustrated Magazine, page 202