Also 6 (?) lodysshestone. [f. load, LODE + STONE sb.
Literally ‘way-stone,’ from the use of the magnet in guiding mariners. Cf. LODESTAR.]
1. Magnetic oxide of iron; also, a piece of this used as a magnet.
c. 1515. Cocke Lorell’s B., 12. One kepte ye compas and watched ye our glasse, Some ye lodysshestone dyd seke.
1548. Udall, etc., Erasm. Par. Mark, 38 b. Like as the lodestone draweth vnto it yron, so [etc.].
1579. Lanc. Wills (Chetham Soc.), II. 156. One rynge of gold havinge in it a stone called a lode stone.
1635. Swan, Spec. M., vi. (1643), 291. The Loadstone, is coloured like iron, but blewer, and tending to a skie colour.
1716. Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett. to Pope, 10 Oct. I. 129. A small piece of loadstone that held up an anchor of steel too heavy for me to lift.
1849. Noad, Electricity (ed. 3), 292. The smallest loadstones have generally a greater attractive power, in proportion to their size, than larger ones.
1877. W. Jones, Finger-ring, 304. A loadstone sometimes was set instead of a jewel, indicative of love’s attractions.
1891. Nature, 3 Sept. The property of the magnet or ‘loadstone’ to point to the north first became known in the eleventh century.
2. fig. Something that attracts.
1577. Northbrooke, Dicing (1843), 102. Such things which are occasions and loade stones to draw people to wickednesse.
a. 1592. Greene, Alphonsus, Wks. (Rtldg.), 246. To have his absence whom he doth account To be the loadstone of his life!
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Bk. Martyrs, Wks. III. 141/1. She was at home, abroad, in euery part, Loadstar and Loadstone to each eye and heart.
a. 1649. Drumm. of Hawth., Poems, Wks. (1711), 47/1. Load-star of love, and load-stone of all hearts.
1778. Miss Burney, Evelina, xxvii. (1791), II. 172. I find you … the general loadstone of attention.
1857. Maurice, Mor. & Met. Philos., III. v. § 3. 164. His human sympathy and human sorrow were to be the lodestone of all hearts.
1877. C. Geikie, Christ, lx. (1879), 735. Jerusalem was now the loadstone that had drawn the whole Jewish world around it.
