Hop Skip & A Stone’s Throw

hop´, skip´, and a jump´

n. 1. a short distance; as its just a “hop, skip & a jump away from my house to yours”

This expression, dating from the early 1700s, originally referred to an exercise or game involving these movements, but by the mid-1800s was also being used figuratively for the short distance so covered.

A stone’s throw

Meaning

A short distance.

Origin

A stone’s throw is, of course, literally the distance that a stone can be thrown, but has come to mean any short but undefined distance. Early English versions of the Bible refer to ‘a stone’s cast’ with the same meaning, as in Luke 22:41, Wycliffe’s Bible, 1526, for example:

in nd he gat himself from them, about a stone’s cast,

‘Stone’s throw’ was used in a non-biblical setting by the end of the 16th century. Arthur Hall’s translation The Ten books of Homers Iliades, 1581, contains this line:

“For who can see a stones throw of ought thing in land or plaine?”

Stones hadn’t then been established as the definitive objects to be thrown and the following year Nicholas Lichefield wrote:

“The enimyes were come, within the throwe of a Dart.”

All forms of the phrase were little used and it wasn’t until 1704 that Jonathan Swift revived it in The battle of the books:

“The two Cavaliers had now approach’d within a Throw of a Lance.”