flint
/flɪnt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.77 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
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.
Uncountable
noun
A piece of flint, such as a gunflint, used to produce a spark by striking it with a firestriker.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A small cylinder of some other material of the same function in a cigarette lighter, etc.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A tailor's employee who is paid by the day.
British usage; Countable; Obsolete; Slang; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "He used flint to make a fire."
- "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."
- "He used a flint to make a fire."
- "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!"
Etymology
From Middle English flynt, flint, from Old English flint, from Proto-West Germanic *flint, from Proto-Germanic *flintaz (compare Dutch vlint, flint (“flint, cobblestone”), German Flins, Flint (“flint, pebble”), Danish flint (“flint”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)plind- (“to split, cleave”) (compare Irish slinn (“slate, shingle”), Ancient Greek πλίνθος (plínthos)), from *(s)pley- (“to split”). More at split.