Crossword clues for whetstone
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Whetstone \Whet"stone`\, n. [AS. hwetst[=a]n.] A piece of stone, natural or artificial, used for whetting, or sharpening, edge tools.
The dullness of the fools is the whetstone of the wits.
--Shak.
Diligence is to the understanding as the whetstone to
the razor.
--South.
Note: Some whetstones are used dry, others are moistened with water, or lubricated with oil.
To give the whetstone, to give a premium for extravagance in falsehood. [Obs.]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 A hard stone or piece of synthetically bonded hard minerals that has been formed with at least one flat surface, used to sharpen or hone an edged tool. 2 (context computing English) A benchmark for evaluating the power of a computer.
WordNet
n. a flat stone for sharpening edged tools or knives
Gazetteer
Housing Units (2000): 1056
Land area (2000): 11.801071 sq. miles (30.564633 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 11.801071 sq. miles (30.564633 sq. km)
FIPS code: 82155
Located within: Arizona (AZ), FIPS 04
Location: 31.703917 N, 110.347996 W
ZIP Codes (1990):
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Whetstone
Wikipedia
Whetstone may refer to:
- Whetstone, a sharpening stone used for knives and other cutting tools
- Hornfels, known by miners in northern England as whetstone
- Whetstone (surname)
- Whetstone (benchmark), a benchmark for measuring computing power
- Operation Whetstone, a nuclear test program in the 1960s
- Whetstone, a fictional county in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Whetstone is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
- George Whetstone
- Peter Whetstone
- Rachel Whetstone
- W. E. Whetstone
- William Whetstone
The Whetstone benchmark is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers. It was first written in Algol 60 in 1972 at TSU (The Technical Support Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry - later part of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency or CCTA in the United Kingdom). It was derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the KDF9 computer at NPL National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, using a modified version of its Whetstone ALGOL 60 compiler. The workload on the machine was represented as a set of frequencies of execution of the 124 instructions of the Whetstone Code. The Whetstone Compiler was built at the Atomic Power Division of the English Electric Company in Whetstone, Leicestershire, England, hence its name. Dr. B.A. Wichman at NPL produced a set of 42 simple ALGOL 60 statements, which in a suitable combination matched the execution statistics.
To make a more practical benchmark Harold Curnow of TSU wrote a program incorporating the 42 statements. This program worked in its ALGOL 60 version, but when translated into FORTRAN it was not executed correctly by the IBM optimizing compiler. Calculations whose results were not output were omitted. He then produced a set of program fragments which were more like real code and which collectively matched the original 124 Whetstone instructions. Timing this program gave a measure of the machine’s speed in thousands of Whetstone instructions per second (kWips) The Fortran version became the first general purpose benchmark that set industry standards of computer system performance. Further development was carried out by Roy Longbottom, also of TSU/CCTA, who became the official design authority. The ALGOL 60 program ran under the Whetstone compiler in July 2010, for the first time since the last KDF9 was shut down in 1980, but now executed by a KDF9 emulator.
Following increased computer speeds, performance measurement was changed to Millions of Whetstone Instructions Per Second (MWIPS). The original results on numerous minicomputers, mainframes and supercomputers are available in Whetstone Benchmark History and Results. This also shows original system costs and year of manufacture. For comparison purposes, a summary of results on PCs is also provided, including a table showing the relative efficiency of various programming languages. Detailed results on PCs are also available, showing speeds of the different test functions.
Source code and pre-compiled versions for PCs in C/ C++, Basic, Visual Basic, Fortran and Java are available in Roy Longbottom's PC Benchmark Collection (Free). Compiled codes include those to run via DOS, OS/2 plus 32 bit and 64 bit Windows.
When information from Roy Longbottom’s site is no longer available, the files, up to at least 2013, have been archived at British Library, with Whetstone Data being of particular significance.
The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the floating-point arithmetic performance. A similar benchmark for integer and string operations is the Dhrystone.
Usage examples of "whetstone".
The guards returned and brought me all my properties, the whetstone and lamp excepted.
Crit- tenden had drawn him a crude map yesterday, showing the town of Apache Peak nestled beneath the shadow of East Peak, the northeasternmost sentinel of the upthrust Whetstones.
Everything Olive had carted into the catacombs was stashed neatly in a long line of open chests and crates, which also held sacks and backpacks, tents, blankets, saddlebags, chains, knives and whetstones, camp dishes, a beat-up shield, a Talis deck, dice, a backgammon board, mirrors, snares, nets, magnifying glasses, a few bottles of wine, and even lockpicks.
He found Elain sitting on the floor with a row of children, sharpening a pile of spearheads with files and whetstones.
Several pieces of the fossil wood were selected by the men to serve as whetstones.
From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone?
From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremost hand has clutched a whetstone?
A careful polish with the gourd he'd prepared during the day, then short, firm strokes with his whetstone to grind any hint of nicks or wear out of the star-metal blade.
The handle was made from the horn of a mule deer and the thin blade flashed in the moonlight as Bolivar carefully drew it back and forth across the whetstone, spitting on the stone now and then to dampen its surface.
I wanted an oily rag and a whetstone, to make it the way it should he once again.
A new whetstone, and a set of small paring knives for cooking (Kellen had managed to break one of the others in his attempts to learn to peel root vegetables, and besides, frequent sharpening wore down the soft steel with time).
He pointed to a wall where a vast variety of whetstones and other types of sharpeners hung from pegs.
There were also rechargeable batteries, light bulbs, solid alcohol for fuel, film, a whetstone, solder and soldering iron, adhesive, assorted fishing line, fire extinguishers .
We found a knife, a survival knife with a whetstone in the sheath and a compass in the handle.
A number of these, the Wolf was told later, had been in fights between members of Zane's own forces, over booze or whetstones or fancied thefts, or all the meaningless trivia over which they'd fought all summer—fights which had broken out immediately after the departure of the relief force for Wrynde.