Meaning & use
cherry stone
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Meanings
nouncountable
the small hard seed that sits in the middle of a cherry.
Grammar: Countable: one cherry stone, two cherry stones.
Patterns
- remove a cherry stone
- spit out a cherry stone
She bit into the cherry and felt a cherry stone against her tooth.
The machine takes out every cherry stone before the fruit goes into the jam.
He kept the cherry stones in a little dish on the table.
nouncountablerare
a rounded, polished stone used as a decoration or in jewelry.
Grammar: Countable and usually literal; less common than the fruit sense.
The necklace was made of cherry stones set in silver.
Old cherry stones were sometimes carved into tiny beads.
Word forms
| plural | cherry stones |
|---|
Common combinations
- remove a cherry stone
- A small tool helps you remove a cherry stone quickly.
- spit out a cherry stone
- He spat out a cherry stone into his hand.
- cherry stone jam
- Cherry stone jam is made from fruit with the seeds taken out.
- swallow a cherry stone
- Children are often warned not to swallow a cherry stone.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cherry pit
- The usual American term for the same hard seed inside a cherry.
- stone
- A shorter, more general word for the hard seed of many fruits, such as peaches and plums.
Word family
- cherry noun
- the small round red fruit that contains a stone.
- cherry-pick verb
- to choose only the best items from a group.
Commonly confused: cherry stone or cherry tomato?
cherry stone vs cherry tomato
A cherry tomato is a small round tomato, not the seed of a cherry; the names look similar but the foods are different.
Practice
Which sentence uses "cherry stone" correctly?
Choose one answer.
A cherry stone is the hard seed inside a cherry, so it can break a tooth if you bite it. Option 0 confuses it with the fruit, and the other options do not match the real meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cherry stone”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.