[f. LAP sb.1 + STONE.] A stone that shoemakers lay in their laps to beat their leather upon.
1778. Love Feast, 18. Next, black-thumb’d Jobson … throws his Lap-Stone down.
1794. Wolcot (P. Pindar), Ode For. Soldiers. Behold his pretty fingers wax the thread, And now the leather on the lap-stone hole.
a. 1810. Tannahill, Come hame to Lingels, Poems (1846), 143. Come hame to your lap-stane, come hame to your last, It’s a bonny affair that your family maun fast.
1852. Hawthorne, Blithedale Rom., I. v. 68. A lapstone, a hammer, a piece of sole-leather, and some waxed ends.
