FLINT

flinty, flint, granitic, obdurate, stony

(adjective) showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings; “his flinty gaze”; “the child’s misery would move even the most obdurate heart”

Flint

(noun) a city in southeast central Michigan near Detroit; automobile manufacturing

Flint, Flint River

(noun) a river in western Georgia that flows generally south to join the Chattahoochee River at the Florida border where they form the Apalachicola River

flint

(noun) a hard kind of stone; a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony

Source: WordNet® 3.1

Etymology

Noun

flint (countable and uncountable, plural flints)

A hard, fine-grained quartz that fractures conchoidally and generates sparks when struck.

A piece of flint, such as a gunflint, used to produce a spark by striking it with a firestriker.

A small cylinder of some other material of the same function in a cigarette lighter, etc.

A type of maize/corn with a hard outer hull.

(figurative) Anything figuratively hard.

Verb

flint (third-person singular simple present flints, present participle flinting, simple past and past participle flinted)

(transitive) To furnish or decorate an object with flint.

Proper noun

Flint

A city, the county seat of Genesee County, Michigan, United States.

An unincorporated community in Texas

A town in Flintshire, Wales, by the estuary of the River Dee (OS grid ref SJ2472).

Source: Wiktionary

Flint, n. Etym: [AS. flint, akin to Sw. flinta, Dan. flint; cf. OHG. flins flint, G. flinte gun (cf. E. flintlock), perh. akin to Gr. Plinth.]

1. (Min.)

Definition: A massive, somewhat impure variety of quartz, in color usually of a gray to brown or nearly black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture and sharp edge. It is very hard, and strikes fire with steel.

2. A piece of flint for striking fire; -- formerly much used, esp. in the hammers of gun locks.

3. Anything extremely hard, unimpressible, and unyielding, like flint. "A heart of flint." Spenser. Flint age. (Geol.) Same as Stone age, under Stone.

– Flint brick, a fire made principially of powdered silex.

– Flint glass. See in the Vocabulary.

– Flint implements (Archæol.), tools, etc., employed by men before the use of metals, such as axes, arrows, spears, knives, wedges, etc., which were commonly made of flint, but also of granite, jade, jasper, and other hard stones.

– Flint mill. (a) (Pottery) A mill in which flints are ground. (b) (Mining) An obsolete appliance for lighting the miner at his work, in which flints on a revolving wheel were made to produce a shower of sparks, which gave light, but did not inflame the fire damp. Knight.

– Flint stone, a hard, siliceous stone; a flint.

– Flint wall, a kind of wall, common in England, on the face of which are exposed the black surfaces of broken flints set in the mortar, with quions of masonry.

– Liquor of flints, a solution of silica, or flints, in potash.

– To skin a flint, to be capable of, or guilty of, any expedient or any meanness for making money. [Colloq.]

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition