A stonemason is a worker whose job is to cut, shape and fit stone for buildings, walls, monuments and gravestones. It is a real trade with a long training — you learn to read the grain of a block, to cut it square, and to set it so the wall stands for centuries. Old churches, castles and city halls were all built by stonemasons, and today they are often the people who repair those same old buildings, because ordinary builders do not know how. The word is also used for people who carve the letters on gravestones, which in many towns is the last stonemason business left. Note the shape of the word: 'mason' by itself already means a person who builds with stone or brick, so 'stonemason' is the clearer, more everyday way to say it. In British English you meet 'mason' alone quite often; in American English 'mason' more often makes people think of brick, or of the Freemasons (a private club, nothing to do with the job), so 'stonemason' is the safe word. It is a normal, neutral word — not formal, not old-fashioned — though the job itself is much rarer now than it was.

石匠、石工（做建築石材的師傅）；刻墓碑的也叫石匠