Noun
A provincial name given in England to basaltic rocks, and applied by miners to other kind of dark-colored unstratified rocks which resist the point of the pick. -- for example, to masses of chert. Whin-dikes, and whin-sills, are names sometimes given to veins or beds of basalt.
Source: Webster's dictionaryNot all his men may sever this, It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls; My whinstone house my castle is- I have my own four walls. Thomas Carlyle