(n.) A flat, circular stone, revolving on an axle, for grinding or sharpening tools, or shaping or smoothing objects.
Example Sentences:
(1) The authors report two new cases of craniofacial lesions due to the explosion of grindstone wheels and consider, after a short technological introduction, the specific features of these lesions diagnostically and therapeutically.
(2) Many of the grindstones used in Nigerian homes are quarried from sandstone in a small group of villages near Kano in the extreme north of the country.
(3) Success is something you work hard at, you put your nose to the grindstone and you do everything you can.
(4) A nose that needs to be put back on the money-making grindstone sharpish.
(5) And off he jogged, up back towards the relentless Bilderberg grindstone.
(6) Perhaps provocative references in Britannia Unchained to people preferring "a lie in to hard work" will look less inflammatory in context, or at least in season (the book's due out in September, traditional month of noses back to grindstones and party conference tub-thumping).
Millstone
Definition:
(n.) One of two circular stones used for grinding grain or other substance.
Example Sentences:
(1) That price is inevitably going to increase over the years and will be another millstone around the BBC’s neck.
(2) Blair’s business decision might thin the fog of rage – and help Labour | Jonathan Freedland Read more The scaling back of commercial activities may remove a second millstone around his reputation, although critics will say he has already made substantial sums from his businesses, including from some authoritarian regimes.
(3) If a younger generation cannot, or is afraid to, incur a massive millstone of debt, their right of access to education is being severely curtailed, if not extinguished.
(4) Like other grocers, its biggest stores have become millstones as customers increasingly shop on the internet and at local convenience stores.
(5) Channel 4's most successful show of the past decade – both in ratings and commercial terms – Big Brother became a millstone around its neck in the wake of the Shilpa Shetty race row in early 2007 and was broadcast for the final time by the broadcaster last year.
(6) Broomhill is a small, local library, in a smart bit of the city, near the university: it's a toasty old house of millstone grit – Edwardian, I think – which, perhaps, was once owned by some upwardly mobile steel magnate.
(7) Their biggest millstone may not be their ability, but whether their association with a previous Labour government leads the party to look to a new, less experienced generation.
(8) Ever since, harder-nosed Tories have been struggling to discredit what they regard as a costly millstone around their neck.
(9) Indeed, the fact he is every bit as image-conscious as United could help give more substance to his status; the size of the fee is unlikely to be a millstone around the neck of a player who, like Cristiano Ronaldo before him, has always believed he has what it takes to become the greatest and seems reinforced by others’ confirmation.
(10) Introducing a grace period for empty property rates for new development will remove a millstone from around neck of the property industry, and let it get on with what it does best – investing in our towns and cities, regenerating communities and building the offices, factories and shops in which we work.
(11) But, for now, the external sector is acting as more of a millstone on the economy than a long hoped-for source of support," he added.
(12) However, the commitment to a review for change in 2017 is arguably as important for driving growth for businesses in the UK – getting the system to be one that drives entrepreneurship, and investment, rather than a being millstone that constrains business.
(13) As the economic crisis dragged on, it seemed there was little that Hollande could do to bring the required drop in unemployment or a boost to industrial output and growth and the Mr Normal tag began to prove something of a millstone.
(14) But looking back, Mr Osborne's conference-pleasing rabbit in 2007 was better tactics than strategy; it worked primarily because it forced Labour to defer the election, but it was also a policy millstone that the Conservatives have had to bear in the middle of the ensuing economic crisis.
(15) In a fiery sermon on Monday , Francis railed against corruption and quoted the bible's advice that practitioners be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck.
(16) "But recent polling shows the issue is becoming a political embarrassment and millstone for the Republican party, even as they have yet to change their stripes.
(17) "But it has got us off 33 points, which has been a millstone around our neck, and, fingers crossed, now in our last eight games we can push on."
(18) If independence is defeated, the story would be that Scotland bottled it; that kind of charge would hang around the country's neck like a millstone, sapping self belief.
(19) I don’t know who invented the West Ham way phrase, but it’s a millstone around the club’s neck.” Allardyce, who steered West Ham to 12th in May after a promising start to the season ran out of steam after Christmas, added that he was not alone in feeling hamstrung by the supporters’ expectations and the club’s past, which saw them win the FA Cup on three occasions – 1964, 1975 and 1980 – and also lift the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965.
(20) In The Millstone (1965), Margaret Drabble's central character, Rosamund, gets pregnant accidentally, after a one-night stand with a man called George.