flint
Pronunciation: /flɪnt/
The English word “flint” has 7 meanings listed here.
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.
- 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 variety of maize/corn with a hard outer hull.
- Anything figuratively hard.
- A tailor's employee who is paid by the day.
verb
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”).…
Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “flint” there
More English words
About this dictionary
The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.
Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.