stonewall

See also: Stonewall, stone-wall, and stone wall

English

WOTD – 28 June 2018

Pronunciation

A basset hound resting on a type of stonewall (sense 4) constructed using the dry-stone method

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈstəʊnwɔːl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈstoʊnwɔl/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈstoʊnwɑl/

• Audio (General Australian):

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• Hyphenation: stone‧wall

Etymology 1

From Middle English stonwal, stone wall, stanewalle (“wall made of stone”), from Old English stānweall (“stonewall”), equivalent to stone +‎ wall. The alcoholic drink (sense 3) was perhaps named thus because its effect was as potent as running into a stone wall.

Noun

stonewall (plural stonewalls)

1. (idiomatic) An obstruction.
   • 1899 July 25, Richard John Seddon (Premier of New Zealand), “Old-age Pensions Act”, in New Zealand. Parliamentary Debates. Fourth Session, Thirteenth Parliament. Legislative Council and House of Representatives, volumes 107 (Comprising the Period from July 20 to August 10, 1899), Wellington: By authority; John Mackay, government printer, →OCLC, page 112, column 2:

     That was what was causing the Government to hesitate in bringing down the Bill. There would be so many amendments proposed, and so many stonewalls erected, that much time would be occupied, and, that being so, he felt he must go on with other business first.

   • 1957 June, George Langelaan, “The Fly”, in Playboy, Chicago, Ill.: Playboy Enterprises, →OCLC; republished as “The Fly”, in Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan, editors, The Mammoth Book of Body Horror, London: Robinson, Constable & Robinson, 2012, →ISBN:

     […] I suddenly realized that here was the opening I had been searching for and perhaps even the possibility of striking a great blow, a blow perhaps powerful enough to shatter her stonewall defence, be it sane or insane.

   • 1985, Richard Holmes, chapter 1, in Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, London: Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN; republished London: Penguin Books, 1985, →ISBN, part 1 (1964: Travels), page 14:

     Our conversation took place in a sort of no-man's land of irregular French. M. Crèspy's patois and Midi twang battled for meaning against my stonewall classroom phrases.

2. (idiomatic) A refusal to cooperate.
   • 1923 February 17, William Ferguson Massey (Prime Minister of New Zealand), “Order of Business”, in New Zealand. Parliamentary Debates. First Session, Twenty-first Parliament. Legislative Council and House of Representatives, volumes 199 (Comprising the Period from February 7 to February 17, 1923), Wellington: By authority; W. A. G. Skinner, government printer, →OCLC, page 362, column 1:

     If it was in order to use the word "stonewalling," I would say your stonewall has come to an end; but it is not in order. I would suggest that we bring the proceedings to an end decently, and if the obstruction is not to go on, then I think the proper thing for me to do is to move the ordinary motion, that the House do now adjourn, and let it go without any further talk.

   • 2017, Elodia Strain, chapter 15, in The Dating Experiment, Springville, Utah: Sweetwater Books, Cedar Fort, Inc., →ISBN:

     "Okay," I said sarcastically, while inside wondering what she was picking up on. / "Anyway," she said, sensing my stonewall, "I was just checking out the Pine Needlers' Facebook Page again, and you guys are killing it. Killing it with kindness as they say."

3. (idiomatic, historical) An alcoholic drink popular in colonial America, consisting of apple cider (or sometimes applejack) mixed with rum (or sometimes gin or whisky).
   • 1868 March 17, James McGrigor Allan, “Europeans, and Their Descendants in North America”, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, volume VI, London: Trübner & Co., 60, Paternoster Row, →OCLC, page cxxxvi:

     [W]e are at a loss to "calculate" the ingredients which enter into such mysterious compounds as "apple-jack," "white nose," "stonewall," chain-lightning," "railroad," "rattle-snake," "back-straightener," "corpse-reviver," "moral suasion," "bottomless-pit," "sabbath-calm," etc.

   • 2014, John J. Duffy, H. Nicholas Muller, III, “Confused Accounts of Ethan Allen’s Death: Later Accounts Compound the Story”, in Inventing Ethan Allen, Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, →ISBN, page 12:

     One highly imaginative account claims the throng told stories through the night in drunken outbursts of wild revelry. As if quoting from a house menu of early American alcoholic drinks, rather than reporting an eyewitness account, this version tells us they "guzzled nobly of punch, of flip, and downed the inevitable stonewalls [a mixture of whiskey or rum and cider]."

   • 2014, Eva-Sabine Zehelein, “‘Been to Barbados’: Rum(bullion), Race, the Gaspée and the American Revolution”, in Susanne Schmid, Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp, editors, Drink in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Perspectives in Economic and Social History; no. 29), London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers, →ISBN; republished Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2016, →ISBN, page 144:

     When members of the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia's City Tavern, they […] ordered, one must assume, a broad variety of drinks, such as the mimbo (shavings from a sugarloaf, rum and water), the sling (two parts water to one part rum), the bombo (which uses molasses instead of sugar, rum and water), the punch, or the calibogus (spruce beer and rum), a flip, a blackstrap (a mix with molasses), or a stonewall (a mix with cider).

4. Alternative form of stone wall (“wall made of stone”).
   • 1883, Brooksby [pseudonym; Edward Pennell-Elmhirst], “The Bedale”, in The Hunting Countries of England, Their Facilities, Character, and Requirements. A Guide to Hunting Men, volumes II (parts IV., V., and VI.), London: Horace Cox, "The Field" Office, 346, Strand, W.C., →OCLC, part IV, page 122:

     The grass looks tempting, and the stonewalls seem built to jump; but the farther west we get, the more rugged become the hillsides and the more broken the beds of the stream, till the scene becomes more akin to the home of the chamois than of the fox. The stonewalls grow higher, stronger, and more frequent, as you rise from the low country and get more fully among the sheepwalks.

   • 1906, John P. Nicholson, Charles A. Richardson, L[unsford] L[indsay] Lomax, “Report of the Gettysburg National Park Commission”, in Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906, volumes IV (Milita Affairs; Military Schools and Colleges; and Military Parks), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 312:

     Stonewalls have been rebuilt along the piked portion of Taneytown road, along the east end of North Confederate avenue, and along Taneytown road south of Pleasonton avenue.

   • 2010, Derek Pomeroy Brereton, “Appendix 4: The Old Stone Walls of New Hampshire”, in Campsteading: Family, Place, and Experience at Squam Lake, New Hampshire, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 225:

     In the present day, New England's stonewalls are the lineaments of her former agrarian vitality. They outline what used to be farm roads, fields, barnyards, pens, cellars, dooryards, empoundments, millraces, bridges, culverts, and graves. […] Stonewalls both preserve and evince the structuring presence of the past. They offer weft to the warp of the land.

   • 2011 December 9, Jack Mitchell, chapter 11, in Angels of the Anasazi, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 140:

     Some had suggested that they build sloped stonewalls the entire length of the streambed. The stonewalls would keep the rushing water in a channel and prevent soil from washing away from the streambed walls.

   • 2012, Walter G. Robillard, Clark on Surveying and Boundaries: 2012 Cumulative Supplement‎^[1], 7th edition, Charlottesville, Va.: LexisNexis, →ISBN:

     There are remnants of a stonewall at the elm tree on Burrough Road. The aerial photograph shows the existence of a stonewall at the elm tree at least in 1964.

Translations

obstruction — see obstruction

refusal to cooperate

• Portuguese: tergiversar (pt)

alcoholic drink

alternative form of stone wall — see stone wall

Verb

stonewall (third-person singular simple present stonewalls, present participle stonewalling, simple past and past participle stonewalled)

1. (transitive) To obstruct.
   • 1876 January–October, “Public Affairs”, in The Melbourne Review, volume 1, Melbourne, Vic.: Samuel Mullen, 55 & 57 Collins Street East, →OCLC, page 244:

     Either the thing to be stonewalled must be itself a bad thing, or it must be stonewalled as the only means of preventing some other wrong being committed; obviously, paying the public creditor was no wrong, and the budget, if wrong, could be effectually obstructed by stonewalling the financial resolutions.

2. (transitive, intransitive, informal) To refuse to answer or cooperate, especially in supplying information.

   At the press conference, the Prime Minister appeared to be stonewalling when asked about tax increases.

   • 1996, Daniel Goleman, “Intimate Enemies”, in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, paperback edition, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, part 3 (Emotional Intelligence Applied), page 141:

     As he becomes defensive or stonewalls in return, she feels frustrated and angry, and so adds contempt to underscore the strength of her frustration. As her husband finds himself the object of his wife's criticism and contempt, he begins to fall into the innocent-victim or righteous-indignation thoughts that more and more easily trigger flooding. To protect himself from flooding, he becomes more and more defensive or simply stonewalls altogether. But when husbands stonewall, remember, it triggers flooding in their wives, who feel completely stymied.

   • 2017 June 4, John Naughton, “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins by Garry Kasparov – review”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Even so, the rematch was a cliffhanger. It was marked by Kasparov’s increasing anger and frustration at the behaviour of IBM, which stonewalled against his requests for printouts of the machine’s logs of completed games.

   • 2022 April 20, Mariella Rudi, “Tostitos Hint of Lime has zero lime – but it’s still the perfect chip”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     Two weeks later, they said they were unable to provide answers and politely passed on the opportunity to talk to me. / It’s unclear why they stonewalled me; maybe the recent lawsuits have executives tight-lipped.

   • 2023 September 30, Hannah Murphy, “The wildest job in Silicon Valley”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 18:

     The silence that follows begins to feel awkward. It's one of several moments where Yaccarino stonewalls.

Derived terms

• stonewaller
• stonewalling (noun)

Translations

to obstruct — see obstruct

to refuse to answer or cooperate

• Dutch: betonneren (nl)
• French: bétonner (fr)
• German: abblocken (de), mauern (de)
• Hungarian: elzárkózik (hu)
• Spanish: entorpecer (es), rehusarse a cooperar
• Tagalog: dedma

Etymology 2

Apparently a corruption of stone cold.

Adjective

stonewall (not comparable)

1. (British) Certain, definite.
   • 2007 February 19, Martin Smith, “Fabregas factor helps Blackburn”, in The Daily Telegraph‎^[4], London, archived from the original on 15 May 2011:

     Fortune favoured the fortunate when Martin Atkinson ignored a stonewall penalty.

   • 2011 January 13, Gordon Parks, “Celtic boss Neil Lennon in new blast at referees after ‘offside’ goal sees two more points dropped in SPL title race”, in Daily Record‎^[5], Glasgow, archived from the original on 7 April 2016:

     [Neil] Lennon also pointed to a booking for Niall McGinn for diving as a stonewall penalty to add to his grievances.

Usage notes

The word is most often encountered in sports contexts in reference to refereeing decisions.

Synonyms

• stone cold

Translations

certain, definite

• Finnish: vuorenvarma