Flint
nounA hard grey or black stone that produces a spark when struck against steel and was historically shaped into tools.
How to spell flint
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce flint
What does flint mean?
- nounA hard grey or black stone that produces a spark when struck against steel and was historically shaped into tools.
Flint in a sentence
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The museum displayed arrowheads chipped from flint by early settlers.
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He struck the steel against a piece of flint to light the campfire.
Where does flint come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Flint comes straight from Old English flint, a native Germanic word for the hard, fine-grained stone that prehistoric people knapped into tools and that strikes a spark when hit against steel. It has close relatives across the old Germanic languages and is ultimately connected to a root meaning something like 'splinter' or 'piece of rock', a fitting sense given how flint fractures into sharp flakes. Because the word descends directly from Anglo-Saxon, its spelling is simple and phonetic, with no Latin or French detour to complicate it. The figurative idea of flint as the very emblem of hardness gave English the adjective 'flinty', used for an unyielding stare or a stony temperament. The word also lives on in 'flintlock', the firearm whose mechanism struck flint against steel to ignite the powder.
How the word is built
- flint (single Old English root; no affixes)
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