Pronunciations (2)
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/flɪnt/
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flɪnt
Noun
A hard, fine-grained quartz that fractures conchoidally and generates sparks when struck against a material such as steel, because tiny chips of the steel are heated to incandescence and burn in air.
Usage- Uncountable
- Examples
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He used flint to make a fire.
More examples (1)
Some of the enormous fragments of chalk which are interstratified with drift have not only layers of undisturbed flints, but also sandpipes in the middle of them, or cylindrical cavities filled with sand and gravel […]
In a cornfield on one side flakings of flint are numerous.
A piece of flint, such as a gunflint, used to produce a spark by striking it with a firestriker.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
- Examples
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He used a flint to make a fire.
A small cylinder of some other material of the same function in a cigarette lighter, etc.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
A variety of maize/corn with a hard outer hull.
Usage- Countable
- Uncountable
Anything figuratively hard.
Usage- Countable
- Figurative
- Uncountable
A tailor's employee who is paid by the day.
Usage- UK usage
- Countable
- Obsolete
- Slang
- Uncountable
Verb
To furnish or decorate an object with flint.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (2)
No schoolboys lingered round Bob Robertson's (yclept Roberson's) blacksmith's shop, for this sleepy day no lusty throat bellowed attention to the flaming tongues fanned from its bloodily blazing teeth; no luminous stars flinted from the clanking anvil.
No change from the primordial doth appear, / Within the earth’s rotation of the year, / Nor are ye heirless of her sane decree, / The problem is potentiality / Of Spring and Autumn, burdenful with Fate, / Upon the seeds of labour ye must wait, / Sowing the Consequence by which ye came, / Flinting the fire not to fire but flame, / With all the end of Destiny the same!
The sun had warmed the air to a balmy 45 degrees and sent sparks flinting off the bleachy white snow.
Adjective
showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings
- Examples
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his flinty gaze
the child's misery would move even the most obdurate heart
Noun
a hard kind of stone; a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony
- Broader terms