whetstone

plural whetstones

1. A sharpening stone; a hard stone or piece of synthetically bonded hard minerals that has been formed with at least one flat surface, used to sharpen or hone an edged tool.

   […]for alwaies the dulneſſe of the foole, is the whetstone of the wits.

   c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 186, column 2, line 192

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   It was as if a stone were ground to dust; as if white sparks flew from a livid whetstone, which was his spine; as if the switchback railway, having swooped to the depths, fell, fell, fell.

   1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC

   Synonyms: honestone

2. figurativelyA stimulant.
3. computingAlternative letter-case form of Whetstone (“benchmark”).

present singular third person whetstones · participle present whetstoning · participle past whetstoned · past whetstoned

1. transitiveTo sharpen with a whetstone.

   Near-synonym: hone (verb)

   Synonyms: stone, hone

1. A suburb and ward in the borough of Barnet, Greater London, England (OS grid ref TQ2693).
2. A large village and civil parish in Blaby district, Leicestershire, England (OS grid ref SP5597).
3. A census-designated place in Cochise County, Arizona, United States.
4. An unincorporated community in Clay County, West Virginia, United States.
5. A surname.
6. computingA synthetic benchmark for evaluating the power and performance of a computer, primarily based on floating-point arithmetic.

   Whetstone reflects mostly numerical computing, using a substantial amount of floating-point arithmetic.

   2018, Sajjan G. Shiva, Advanced Computer Architectures, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 67

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   Developed in the early 1970s by Harold Curnow and Brian Wichmann, Whetstones was originally released in Algol and Fortran versions but was later translated into several other languages.

   2016, Joseph D. Dumas II, Computer Architecture: Fundamentals and Principles of Computer Design, second edition, CRC Press, →ISBN

plural Whetstones

1. computingA single instruction of the Whetstone benchmark, often expressed as a value per second.

   The Prodigy 4 does 500,000 Whetstones.

   1994, Binod C. Agrawal, Larry R. Symes, Future of Computerisation in Institutions of Higher Learning, Concept Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 92