FLINT

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Flint mean? 

• FLINT (noun)
  The noun FLINT has 3 senses:

1. a hard kind of stone; a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony

2. a river in western Georgia that flows generally south to join the Chattahoochee River at the Florida border where they form the Apalachicola River

3. a city in southeast central Michigan near Detroit; automobile manufacturing

  Familiarity information: FLINT used as a noun is uncommon.

• FLINT (adjective)
  The adjective FLINT has 1 sense:

1. showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings

  Familiarity information: FLINT used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FLINT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A hard kind of stone; a form of silica more opaque than chalcedony

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("flint" is a kind of...):

silica; silicon dioxide; silicon oxide (a white or colorless vitreous insoluble solid (SiO2); various forms occur widely in the earth's crust as quartz or cristobalite or tridymite or lechatelierite)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "flint"):

gunflint (the piece of flint that provides the igniting spark in a flintlock weapon)

firestone (a piece of flint that is struck to light a fire)

flintstone (pebbles of flint used in masonry construction)

Derivation:

flinty (containing flint)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A river in western Georgia that flows generally south to join the Chattahoochee River at the Florida border where they form the Apalachicola River

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

Flint; Flint River

Instance hypernyms:

river (a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek))

Holonyms ("Flint" is a part of...):

Empire State of the South; GA; Ga.; Georgia; Peach State (a state in southeastern United States; one of the Confederate states during the American Civil War)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A city in southeast central Michigan near Detroit; automobile manufacturing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

city; metropolis; urban center (a large and densely populated urban area; may include several independent administrative districts)

Holonyms ("Flint" is a part of...):

Great Lakes State; MI; Mich.; Michigan; Wolverine State (a midwestern state in north central United States in the Great Lakes region)

• FLINT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings

Synonyms:

flint; flinty; granitic; obdurate; stony

Context example:

the child's misery would move even the most obdurate heart

Similar:

hardhearted; heartless (lacking in feeling or pity or warmth)

 Context examples 

There was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

In five minutes he died. My God! how he died! But my heart was flint, for he endured nothing which my innocent darling had not felt before him.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Here is flint and steel,” said John stolidly.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His heavily thatched eyebrows covered quick, furtive grey eyes, and his gaunt features were hollowed at the cheek and temple like water-grooved flint.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It takes two flints to make a fire.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They have a kind of hard flints, which, by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges, axes, and hammers.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

She was a fine tall woman, black and quick and fierce, with a proud way of carrying her head, and a glint from her eye like a spark from a flint.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The researchers planted 45 hybrid corn plants representing the major types of corn — popcorn, broom corn, dent, flint and others — to look for variation in their responses to high ozone levels.

(Study finds rising ozone a hidden threat to corn, National Science Foundation)

Chemical analysis of 10 flints using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry showed that the stone tools had been coated with resin from local pine trees, and in one case, resin had also been mixed with beeswax.

(Neanderthals used resin 'glue' for tools, National Science Foundation)