variants
also stoney
as in ruthless
having or showing a lack of sympathy or tender feelings
the judge's stony demeanor didn't raise the defendant's hopes for a more lenient sentence
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of stony
Across this stony landscape, light sometimes falls.
—
Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2026
Forgotten animal pens, decaying cages and stony backdrops now sit in various states of abandonment.
—Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2026
That means the flavor can range from mild and clean to stony or salty, and the intensity of the bubbles also varies from delicate to aggressive.
—Karla Walsh, Better Homes & Gardens, 16 Jan. 2026
Delectable notes of lemon curd on the nose, citrus blossom, and stony minerality, with peach tart and a drizzle of honey, and a lovely balance of medium body, lots of juicy fruit and crisp acidity.
—Cathrine Todd, Forbes.com, 16 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for stony
Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2026
Forgotten animal pens, decaying cages and stony backdrops now sit in various states of abandonment.
—Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2026
That means the flavor can range from mild and clean to stony or salty, and the intensity of the bubbles also varies from delicate to aggressive.
—Karla Walsh, Better Homes & Gardens, 16 Jan. 2026
Delectable notes of lemon curd on the nose, citrus blossom, and stony minerality, with peach tart and a drizzle of honey, and a lovely balance of medium body, lots of juicy fruit and crisp acidity.
—Cathrine Todd, Forbes.com, 16 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for stony
Recent Examples of Synonyms for stony
Adjective
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Lydia, naturally, has her own reasons for pairing Agnes and Daisy together, evolving from a ruthless zealot and disciplinarian in Handmaid’s Tale into a kind of double agent looking to overthrow Gilead from within the hallowed halls of power in Testaments, as the finale set her up to do.—
Max Gao,
HollywoodReporter,
5 Mar. 2026
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After enduring a tough patch in business, fate changes his course, turning him into El Serpiente, a ruthless political strategist.—
Anna Marie de la Fuente,
Variety,
3 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Waltz lends a slimy charisma to the merciless SS colonel, who gets a satisfying comeuppance via carving knife.—
Brian Truitt,
USA Today,
4 Mar. 2026
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These are two of the most conniving, merciless people on television, and they’re bonded by the twin desire to be more like the other.—
Amanda Whiting,
Vulture,
23 Feb. 2026
Adjective
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Official statistics are hard to come by, but town residents — several of whom asked to be identified by only first names to protect their safety — estimated around 80 cars were set aflame in a municipality of just 20,000 people.—
Senior Editor,
Los Angeles Times,
6 Mar. 2026
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In the absence of hard data, the kind that become available years or decades after a war, the temptation is to reach for analogies or proverbial wisdom, or any of the other heuristic shortcuts that the psychologist Daniel Kahneman thoroughly described in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.—
Eliot A. Cohen,
The Atlantic,
6 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
Engineers have long searched for efficient electric alternatives that can survive the harsh conditions inside industrial systems.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
6 Mar. 2026
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Critics say the danger faced by agents whose names are made public is overblown, almost always limited to harsh and violent words lobbed from behind a laptop or phone screen.—
James Queally,
Los Angeles Times,
6 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Iran, with its massive military capabilities, its oil wealth, its appetite for regional hegemony and its obdurate Islamism may have been the foremost obstacle to Israel’s integration into the region since 1979.—
Ron Kampeas,
Sun Sentinel,
2 Mar. 2026
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Despite the deluge of new data, the megaliths had given up none of their obdurate strangeness.—
Alex Ross,
New Yorker,
24 Nov. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Stony.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/stony. Accessed 9 Mar. 2026.
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