/ə ˈstəʊnz ˈθɹəʊ/
English idiom, everyday. A very short distance away.
Draft Not yet checked by a native English speaker.
How do people use A stone’s throw
?
Used to stress how close two places are, and real estate listings love it: “a stone’s throw from the beach”. The usual patterns are “a stone’s throw from X”, “within a stone’s throw of X” and “just a stone’s throw away”, and they describe physical distance rather than time.
Also said a stone’s throw away, within a stone’s throw of, a stone’s cast
A stone’s throw
in real sentences
-
She lives within a stone’s throw of the school.
Tatoeba, sentence by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
-
The post office is a stone’s throw from here.
Tatoeba, sentence by tieguy, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does A stone’s throw
come from?
This one is well documented. Phrase Finder notes that early English Bibles say “a stone’s cast” (Luke 22:41) and that “stone’s throw” appears outside the Bible in Arthur Hall’s 1581 translation of the Iliad. Other things got thrown in the phrase for a while (a dart in 1582, a lance in Swift’s 1704 The Battle of the Books) until John Arbuthnot’s The History of John Bull (1712) settled on stones for good.
Mistakes learners make with A stone’s throw
Dropping the possessive: “a stone throw away” is a common slip. It needs the “’s”.
Other English idioms like A stone’s throw
Spot a mistake in A stone’s throw
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.