flint
A hard, fine-grained quartz that fractures conchoidally and generates sparks when…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.
» He struck a spark from the flint.
Er schlug einen Funken aus dem Feuerstein.
Он высек искру из кремня.
Meaning
6 senses(uncountable)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.
He used flint to make a fire.
Feuerstein, Flintstein, Flint
креме́ньkreménʹ
кре́міньkréminʹ
(countable, uncountable)A piece of flint, such as a gunflint, used to produce a spark by striking it with a firestriker.
He used a flint to make a fire.
Feuerstein, Zündstein
огни́воognívo
креса́лоkresálo, огни́воohnývo
(countable, uncountable)A small cylinder of some other material of the same function in a cigarette lighter, etc.
(countable, uncountable)A variety of maize/corn with a hard outer hull.
(countable, figuratively, uncountable)Anything figuratively hard.
(UK, countable, obsolete, slang, uncountable)A tailor's employee who is paid by the day.
- a city in southeast central Michigan near Detroit; automobile manufacturing
- a river in western Georgia that flows generally south to join the Chattahoochee River at the Florida border where they form the Apalachicola River
- a hard kind of stone; a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony
Examples
19 sentencesHe struck a spark from the flint.
ruОн высек искру из кремня.
deEr schlug einen Funken aus dem Feuerstein.
What's diamond is diamond, what's flint is flint.
The landscape was cold and sharp as flint.
With patience, you can even bore through flint.
Ziri struck the flint to ignite the tinder.
Translations
9 languagesBy meaning 2
By meaning 2
By meaning 2
Origin
From Middle English flynt, flint, from Old English flint, from Proto-West Germanic *flint,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.
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Forms
plural: flintsSynonyms
1 synonyms- 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 River
Word family
28 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable