hearthstone

Etymology

From hearth + stone.

noun

1. A flat stone used to form a hearth.
2. (by extension) The fireside, home life.
   I am going to my own hearth-stone, / Bosomed in yon green hills alone, 1846, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Good-Bye, line 15
   The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land 1861, Abraham Lincoln, First inaugural address
   The denominational relations of a household will shape the future political positions of the young men growing around the hearth-stone, just as they did those of their fathers 1876, Richard J. Hinton, English Radical Leaders, page 55
3. A soft kind of stone used to whiten doorsteps, scour floors, etc.
   Lastly, there is the hearth-stone barrow, piled up with hearth-stone, Bath-brick and lumps of whiting 1861, Henry Mayhew, London labour and the London Poor, volume 1, page 29

verb

1. (transitive) To scour, as a floor, with hearthstone.
   We've a woman come in twice a week, to scrub, and red-brick, and hearthstone, and black-lead, and the rest we manage ourselves. 1876, Hallberger's Illustrated Magazine, page 202