Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A hard black stone, such as jasper or basalt, formerly used to test the quality of gold or silver by comparing the streak left on the stone by one of these metals with that of a standard alloy.
- noun An excellent quality or example that is used to test the excellence or genuineness of others.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A very fine-grained dark-colored variety of schist or jasper, used for trying the quality of alloys of the precious metals.
- noun Any test or criterion by which the qualities of a thing are tried: as, money, the touchstone of common honesty.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Min.) Lydian stone; basanite; -- so called because used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak which is left upon the stone when it is rubbed by the metal. See
basanite . - noun Any test or criterion by which the qualities of a thing are tried.
- noun (Min.) basalt, the stone which composes the Giant's Causeway.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
stone used to test the quality ofgold alloys . - noun A standard of comparison or evaluation.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated
Etymologies
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Examples
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Situated alongside the River Thames, the iconic power plant has been featured in works by The Who, Pink Floyd and The Beatles, and now this cultural touchstone is being retrofitted into a self-sufficent community powered by a zero-carbon energy plant.
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Harry and Sally bicker over Casablanca; for the women of Sleepless in Seattle, the emotional touchstone is An Affair to Remember (“Men never get this movie!”).
Double-X Films 2009
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Its touchstone is the autonomous individual celebrated by John Locke in
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Like Lincoln's, its touchstone is the common good of the nation, not the sovereign self.
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The touchstone is this Rolling Stone postmortem of the battle over Caliornia’s Proposition 8, which concludes that the anti-gay amendment could have been defeated, but for a signally inept campaign waged by its opponents.
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