Brimstone Definition

brĭmstōn
noun
Webster's New World
Sulfur, especially considered as a component of the torments of hell in Christianity.
American Heritage
Damnation to hell.
American Heritage
Vehement or condemnatory rhetoric, especially rhetoric warning of the torments of hell for immoral behavior.
A sermon full of fire and brimstone.
American Heritage
Wiktionary
Synonyms:
  • native sulfur
  • native sulphur
adjective

Composed of or resembling brimstone; about or pertaining to Hell.

'[W]ho walked up Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she comforts herself with brimstone doctrine.' — Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller.
'[A] cheerful ballad about a murderer who was afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone flames around him.' — Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbevilles.
Wiktionary

Other Word Forms of Brimstone

Noun

Singular:
brimstone
Plural:
brimstones

Origin of Brimstone

  • From Middle English brimston, bremston, corrupted forms of brinston, brenston, bernston, from Old English brynstān (“brimstone”, literally “burn-stone”), equivalent to brian +‎ stone, or burn +‎ stone. Cognate with Scots brunstane (“brimstone”), Icelandic brennisteinn (“sulfur, brimstone”), German Bernstein (“amber”). Compare also brimfire. More at burn, stone.

    From Wiktionary

  • Middle English brimston from Old English brynstān gwher- in Indo-European roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • Once a synonym for "sulphur," the word is now restricted to Biblical usage.

    From Wiktionary

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