Flint
Noun:
- A hard, grayish-black form of silica (quartz): A very hard type of rock that produces sparks when struck against steel, historically used to start fires.
- A piece of this stone, or a man-made imitation: Used in tools like lighters or historical firearms to create a spark.
Adjective:
- Made of flint: Consisting of this type of hard stone.
- Figuratively, showing unfeeling hardness or sternness: Having a character that is extremely hard, unyielding, or resistant to emotion.
Noun (Material):
- Prehistoric humans used flint to make sharp tools and weapons.
- The lighter needs a new flint to spark properly.
Noun (Object):
- He struck the flint with steel to ignite the tinder.
Adjective (Literal):
- They built a flint wall around the ancient settlement.
Adjective (Figurative - Hard/Unfeeling):
- She gave him a flint look that stopped his complaints cold.
- His flint determination saw him through the crisis.
"To set one's face like flint": To become or appear extremely determined and resolute, showing no sign of yielding or changing one's mind.
- Faced with criticism, she set her face like flint and continued her research.
"A heart of flint": A metaphorical expression describing someone who is very hard-hearted, unfeeling, or lacking in compassion.
- The tyrant was said to have a heart of flint.
Flinty (Adjective): The more common adjectival form, meaning resembling flint in hardness or having a stern, grim quality.
- He had flinty eyes that missed nothing.
- They farmed the flinty soil.
Flintlock (Noun): A historical type of gun that used a piece of flint to strike steel and create the spark to fire the gunpowder. (Note: This is a compound word listed separately as per instruction.)
- Noun (for the stone): Chert, firestone, silica.
- Adjective (for hardness of character): Adamant, obdurate, stony, unyielding, hard-hearted.
To skin a flint: To be extremely stingy or miserly. (Implies trying to get something valuable from a worthless object).
- That landlord would skin a flint; he charges for everything.
To get blood from a flint / To wring water from a flint: To attempt the impossible; to try to get something from a source that cannot provide it.
- Asking him for a donation is like trying to get blood from a flint.
- showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings
- his flinty gaze
- the child's misery would move even the most obdurate heart
- 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