Stoned

//stəʊnd// adj, verb, slang

adj, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of stone form-of, participle, past
Adjective
  1. 1
    Containing stones.
  2. 2
    Having had the stones removed.
  3. 3
    Drunk; intoxicated by alcohol. archaic, slang

    "STONED: drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world."

  4. 4
    High on drugs, especially cannabis. slang

    "We got stoned and ate four bags of potato chips."

  5. 5
    Exhilarated; intoxicated by something (such as love) other than drugs or alcohol. slang

    ""I am stoned on Jesus! He turns me on and gives me something drugs never could!""

Adjective
  1. 1
    under the influence of narcotics, especially cannabis wordnet

Example

More examples

"Drink wet cement and get really stoned."

Etymology

From Middle English stoned (simple past) and stoned, istoned (past participle), equivalent to stone + -ed. The etymology for the sense of "exhilarated, intoxicated by substances", which originated in American English in the mid-20th century, is not fully clear. It could be derived from stone drunk, a common slang expression from the mid-19th to early-20th century. It is more frequently theorized to be a phono-semantic matching of Italian-American slang stunod (“dazzled, stupid”), from Italian stonato (“out of tune, off-key”). In 1952, Life Magazine listed it in a glossary of bop musician slang, in the sense of "drunk, captivated, ecstatic, sent out of this world" (see quote). This could lend further credence to the idea of the word originating from a musical term.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.