Entry · catalog no. 5010
stone
/ /stoʊn/ /STOHN
adjective/adverb (intensifier) · Black urban speech nationwide, from street-corner toasts to soul radio · 1950s
✓ Verified
1.
Complete, utter, to the core; placed before a noun or adjective to certify the genuine article.
“That woman is a stone fox, and everybody at the party knew it.”
2.
Thoroughly, absolutely (adverbial use).
“He was stone in love and didn't care who saw it.”
Origin & Attribution
As an intensifier meaning 'absolutely, to the bone,' stone belongs to Black street speech, and its earliest datable fixings are in the toasts — the rhymed oral epics of the Black hustling life — where lines like 'I'm a stone dope fiend' were collected from performances dating to the early 1950s. Hermese Roberts's 1971 glossary The Third Ear defined it plainly for outsiders: stone intensifies whatever follows, so a stone fox is a very beautiful woman. Soul music pressed the word into vinyl in the early 1970s: the Stylistics' 'I'm Stone in Love with You' went top ten in 1972, and James Brown's 'Stoned to the Bone' (1973), the lead single from The Payback, stacked two Black superlatives into one title. The construction radiated outward through Black film and campus talk in the 1970s, and its fossil 'stone-cold' — as in stone-cold killer — still does the same intensifying work in general American English, mostly without credit to the speakers who built it.
1953
'Stone' intensifier in Black toasts collected from the early 1950s
1972
The Stylistics' 'I'm Stone in Love with You' hits the top ten
1973
James Brown releases 'Stoned to the Bone' ahead of The Payback
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Black urban speech nationwide, from street-corner toasts to soul radio · 1950s
Spoken by
Toast-tellers and street poets, then soul singers and the whole R&B audience
$STONEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant73 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
75/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1953
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
The Life: The Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler (toasts) — 1976
scholarship · verified
■
I'm Stone in Love with You — The Stylistics — 1972
song · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceStoned to the Bone — James Brown — 1973
song · verified
See also