flint
/flɪnt/ noun C1- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Plural flints
From the library
Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously, at other time he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water and when the flint makes ‘duck-and-drake’ five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz.
“Oh, here are two flints and a piece of burnt linen.”
There was a cabinet of flint instruments.
"It is quite superficial." His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face.
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