a person whose trade is building with units of various natural or artificial mineral products, as stones, bricks, cinder blocks, or tiles, usually with the use of mortar or cement as a bonding agent.
a person who dresses stones or bricks.
(initial capital letter) a Freemason.
Bobbie Ann, born 1940, U.S. short-story writer and novelist.
Charles, 1730–87, English astronomer and surveyor.
George, 1725–92, American statesman.
Lowell, 1792–1872, U.S. hymnist and educator.
Dame Sandra Prunella, born 1949, Barbadian politician: 1st president of Barbados since 2021.
a male given name.
a person skilled in building with stone
a person who dresses stone
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English machun, mason, from Old French machun, masson, from Frankish makjon (unrecorded) “maker,” derivative of makōn “to make”; see make 1
If you spent the summer building a beautiful stone wall around your backyard, you may have a future as a mason, someone who builds things out of brick or stone. Usage experts can’t quite agree on the origins of the word mason. Some believe that it traces back to the German word mahhon, meaning "to make." True or not, it’s a good way to remember the meaning of mason: masons make things out of brick or stone. A mason is a skilled craftsperson who might, for example, carve stone for a memorial or do work on the brick walls of a house.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Every spring, mason Mohammad Ghulam Sarwar boards a train to Indian Kashmir, seeking higher wages despite the risk of being targeted by militants in the disputed Himalayan region.
From Barron's ● Sep. 14, 2026
Pappu Verma, a mason, now works from 7am until noon, then again from 4pm until 7pm.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
We loaded them into a giant mason jar, but it was too late.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2026
Hockey is like that of a medieval mason who helped lay a forgotten stone in a cathedral’s foundation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
Hens strutted by with one suspicious eye on the deweys, another on the brick fireplace where sheets and mason jars were boiled.
From "Sula" by Toni Morrison
“It’s really just project economics,” said Skip York, chief energy strategist at Turner, Mason & Co.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 1, 2026
According to Judge Diamond’s opinion, the turmoil began when Matthew Stiegler, a district attorney’s office supervisor, assigned the Johnson case to Jaclyn Mason, an experienced lawyer who had been a prosecutor for just four months.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
Chris Mason, co-founder of Intelligent People - a specialist recruitment agency for the tech industry, says focusing on ice coffees alone "does seem to be an overreaction on the US recruiter's part".
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
The top of the Dodgers order got one last chance to start a rally in the ninth inning, against star closer Mason Miller.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me—but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.”
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
"We have no-one to work in the hotels, drive our buses or work in construction; we don't have masons or mechanics," warns Francis Candil, deputy minister for welfare.
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2026
Before that he was a young boy, born on Halloween, frolicking among unmarked headstones as the son of funerary masons.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025
The group plans to start paying the masons from a GoFundMe that has now raised more than $100,000.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2025
The week-long recruitment drive began on Tuesday, with a 15-member Israeli team overseeing the process and expecting to fill over 5,000 positions for masons, carpenters and other construction workers in Israel.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
Stone cutters and sculptors finished the moldings and capitals while masons laid the stone slabs that made up the floor.
From "Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction" by David Macaulay
The masoned house it dinled through; It dung the ship, it cowped the coo; The rankit aiks it overthrew, Had braved a’ weathers; The strang sea-gleds it took an’ blew Awa’ like feethers.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson
No, no: nor was the Pyramid of Cheops masoned in a month; though, once built, the sands left by the deluge might not have submerged such a pile.
From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I by Herman Melville
He stopped up the two doors which communicated with the aisles of the church, and the two which opened into the chancel, and which, though visible, still remain masoned up.
From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 534, February 18, 1832 by Various
The stream poured solid and green through the narrow, masoned course of the forebay, sweeping in a lucent arc over the lip of the fall.
From The Three Black Pennys A Novel by Joseph Hergesheimer
The masoned house it dinled through; It dung the ship, it cowped the coo'.
From Underwoods by Robert Louis Stevenson
A moment comes, presently, when the harvesting is interrupted and the masoning resumed.
From The Mason-Bees by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
No matter: the Bee who was masoning will mason.
From The Mason-Bees by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
She was doing mason's work; and, once on that tack, guided by the unconscious impulse, she has to keep masoning, even though her labour be useless, superfluous and opposed to her interests.
From The Mason-Bees by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
