(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.
Sandstone
Definition:
(n.) A rock made of sand more or less firmly united. Common or siliceous sandstone consists mainly of quartz sand.
Example Sentences:
(1) Flames could be seen through the scorched windows and billowing out of the roof of the sandstone building on the corner of Renfrew Street and Scott Street.
(2) Pueblo Bonita, constructed from artfully stacked sandstone blocks between AD900 and 1100, was once the centre of culture and commerce for the ancient Puebloan people .
(3) Aside from history enthusiasts and couples seeking privacy from the crowded city, few enter the red sandstone gate between the fort’s stout bastions.
(4) This is probably explained by the intensity of exposure and the particular kind of sandstone being worked.
(5) Inside the cottages – which sleep four, five and six people – oak beams and sandstone walls are offset by 21st-century comforts such as satellite TV, DVD players and dishwashers.
(6) The light sandstone Union Buildings , at 99 a year younger than the ANC, are a visual metaphor for the republic's rich and sometimes jarring contradictions.
(7) The prevalence of silicosis in these open-cast sandstone quarriers is unexpectedly high.
(8) For an intimate encounter with this geology and the water that helped to form it, head to the canyon systems of Wadi Mujib to take on the Malaqi Trail, a sandstone assault course of rocky scrambles and dizzying waterfall rappels.
(9) The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) for lung cancer was 200 (44 observed, 22.0 expected) for all skilled stone workers, 808 (7 observed, 0.9 expected) for skilled sandstone cutters in Copenhagen, 119 (8 observed, 6.5 expected) for skilled granite cutters in Bornholm, 181 (24 observed, 13.2 expected) for all unskilled stone workers, 246 (17 observed, 6.9 expected) for unskilled workers in the road and building material industry, and 111 (7 observed, 6.3 expected) for unskilled workers in the stonecutting industry.
(10) There's limestone and sandstone to the north, but Aswan's bedrock is hornblende granite.
(11) The iron-oxides (superfine hematite) are eroded from the Peron Sandstone exposed in some coastal cliffs and constitute up to 2% of substrate sediments near these cliffs.
(12) 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.
(13) It's nonsense: Brown at best is some sort of decayed shale, shattered rubble containing the odd fossil and Cameron a rather smart golden sandstone.
(14) It comes from the new locality of Xirochori in the red sandstone of the Nea Messimbria formation.
(15) Monument Valley is named for the dozens of free-standing sandstone buttes and monoliths that tower above the sweeping sagebrush landscape.
(16) For water-wet Berea Sandstone a flood front was readily observed, but some of the oil was apparently left behind in small, isolated pockets which were larger than individual pores.
(17) Mahendraparvata was never really "lost" – the mountain has long been known as the location of the sandstone quarries that built Angkor's cities, as well as the source of water for a complex system that irrigated the vast empire.
(18) From these offices, on the lower ground floor of a Victorian sandstone building in central Glasgow, campaigners with Yes Scotland are preparing to unleash a torrent of billboard adverts, celebrity endorsements, star-studded campaign rallies, street stalls and pop-up shops selling independence for Scotland .
(19) Carved into the sandstone bedrock of north-eastern Arizona, near Chinle, the three spectacular canyons, De Chelly, Del Muerto, and Monument, lie at the centre of the Navajo Nation and at the heart of many native legends.
(20) Experimental NMR imaging measurements of two-phase displacement were conducted in several limestones and sandstones representing various different types of pore structures, including a macroscopically homogeneous structure, a laminated structure, and a sample that exhibits porosity at different scales.