Meaning
A cold, unfeeling, pitiless or harsh nature, or a person who has one; the fixed frame is nearly always to have a heart of stone, and the phrase thrives in negative appeals such as it would take a heart of stone not to weep, conceding that even the hardest onlooker will be moved. It is the standard opposite of a heart of gold, which this site treats separately. Do not merge with heart of gold, the antonym, which has its own entry on this site. The common rhetorical frame is negative - you would need a heart of stone not to. The King James wording is stony heart, a variant rather than the idiom itself. Regional use: All major English varieties.
Origin
The OED dates heart of stone to about 1413, its first quotation being Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, composed circa 1385: 'It myght han mad an herte of ston for to rewe'. The biblical anchor usually cited is Ezekiel 36:26, and the Wycliffite Bible of about 1395 rendered it 'Y schal do awei an herte of stoon' - roughly two centuries before the King James Bible of 1611, which reads stony heart, not heart of stone, verified at the parallel verse Ezekiel 11:19 on Wikisource. The English phrase therefore predates the King James wording it is often traced to. The OED adds later hooks: Hervey in 1746 and Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836), where the widow's lamentations would have pierced a heart of stone. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms gives an early-1600s date citing Job 41:24, ignoring the medieval English record - antedated by roughly two centuries and reported as a disagreement.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- hearts of stone
- stony heart
- to have a heart of stone
Usage Examples
- The landlord raised the rent again without a word; the man has a heart of stone.
- It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the choir's final hymn.
- Negotiators accused the minister of having a heart of stone throughout the appeals for famine relief.