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• flint
  flint

  noun

  a hard stone, a form of silica resembling chalcedony but more opaque, less pure, and less lustrous.
• Flint
  Flint

  noun

  Austin, 1812–86, U.S. physician: founder of Bellevue and Buffalo medical colleges.

flint

¹ American  

[flint] / flɪnt /

noun

• flints
  plural

1. a hard stone, a form of silica resembling chalcedony but more opaque, less pure, and less lustrous.

2. a piece of this, especially as used for striking fire.

3. a chunk of this used as a primitive tool or as the core from which such a tool was struck.

4. something very hard or unyielding.

5. a small piece of metal, usually an iron alloy, used to produce a spark to ignite the fuel in a cigarette lighter.

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verb (used with object)

1. to furnish with flint.

Flint ² American  

[flint] / flɪnt /

noun

1. Austin, 1812–86, U.S. physician: founder of Bellevue and Buffalo medical colleges.

2. his son Austin, 1836–1915, U.S. physiologist and physician.

3. a city in SE Michigan.

4. Flintshire.

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flint ¹ British  

/ flɪnt /

noun

1. an impure opaque microcrystalline greyish-black form of quartz that occurs in chalk. It produces sparks when struck with steel and is used in the manufacture of pottery, flint glass, and road-construction materials. Formula: SiO 2

2. any piece of flint, esp one used as a primitive tool or for striking fire

3. a small cylindrical piece of an iron alloy, used in cigarette lighters

4. Also called: flint glass.   white flint.  colourless glass other than plate glass

5. See optical flint

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verb

1. (tr) to fit or provide with a flint

Flint ² British  

/ flɪnt /

noun

1. a town in NE Wales, in Flintshire, on the Dee estuary. Pop: 11 936 (2001)

2. a city in SE Michigan: closure of the car production plants led to a high level of unemployment. Pop: 120 292 (2003 est)

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flint Scientific  

/ flĭnt /

1. A very hard, gray to black variety of chalcedony that makes sparks when it is struck with steel. It breaks with a conchoidal fracture.

2. The dark gray to black variety of chert.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• flintlike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• flints
  plural

Etymology

Origin of flint

before 900; Middle English, Old English; cognate with Middle Dutch vlint, Danish flint; cf. plinth

Explanation

Flint is a very hard type of rock. Ever since humans first learned to make tools, back in the Stone Age, they've used flint. Through history, flint has been used for sharp tools, in walls and buildings, for making sparks to start fires, and in jewelry and pottery. You can also use the word figuratively, to mean a quality of hardness or even cruelty in a someone's personality: "The flint in his nature made him unsympathetic even to the most pitiful crying child."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

flint Flint flints

The process of discovering exactly how old it is may take some time, but flint tools, excavated with the fossil, suggest it could have been buried in Islandmagee as many as 3,000 years ago.

From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026

You have to be particular about muzzle-loading a flintlock and making sure the flint is in place.

From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2024

Most of the clues come as pottery, flint tools and bones.

From New York Times ● Mar. 19, 2024

Whereas glass scrapers were an incremental improvement over flint and obsidian, the introduction of the horse sparked a profound shift on the open grasslands, or pampas, of Patagonia.

From Science Magazine ● Dec. 7, 2023

Then we remembered that our father once said he could start a fire by rubbing two flint stones against each other.

From "Tasting the Sky" by Ibtisam Barakat

Dave Marsh was born in Flint, Michigan, where his dad worked on the railroad and did not appreciate the length of his son’s hair or the music he listened to.

From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026

Nathan Murdoch, 38, runs Street Arts Hire and has painted several murals in Peterborough, including tributes to Prodigy singer Keith Flint, and a Jude Bellingham portrait during the football World Cup.

From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026

We’ve had water treatment failures, chemical imbalances brought on by malfunction, E. coli contamination, and the people of Flint, Michigan, of course, appreciate the criticality of clean water better than anyone in the country.

From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2026

“Proposition 28 has been difficult to implement for many reasons, including the need to increase the number of qualified arts educators, unclear fiscal requirements, and a lack of guidance from the state,” Flint said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

“The northmen too. Flint and Norrey. Leathers, you should be there as well.”

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

In the chapter titled “Cerium,” Levi describes how, wracked with hunger, he stole iron-cerium rods to make flints for cigarette lighters so that he could exchange them for bread.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026

There are certainly flints of autobiography and different friends in different characters — they’ve read it and liked it, and if they saw themselves, they were pleasant about it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 13, 2026

In the chemical industry, cerium is widely used in oil refining and glass polishing -- as well as in flints for cigarette lighters.

From Barron's ● Feb. 4, 2026

More than 3,500 finds were discovered during the excavation, including animal bone, glass and worked flints and 1,405 broken pieces of pottery.

From BBC ● Jan. 9, 2024

“Jubilee, I think this is some of your best work. Louisa May Alcott said, ‘It takes two flints to make a fire.’

From "Hope Springs" by Jaime Berry