Etymologically
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flint

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English flint, inherited from Old English flint (“flint, rock”),[2][3][4][5] inherited from Proto-Germanic *flintaz.[3][6] Its cognates are Middle Dutch vlint, Old High German flins (“flint, hard stone”), Danish flint and Swedish flinta,[7][5][3][8] and Merriam-Webster also compares Old Norse flettugrjót (“slate”).[2] It is usually compared with Ancient Greek πλίνθος (plínthos, “brick, tile”), the source of plinth,[7][9][10] and Klein also with Old Irish slind (“brick”).[11] Older dictionaries took these words, with split and splinter, from an Indo-European root meaning to split;[5][11][2] Etymonline describes this as formerly said,[3] and Orel thinks that the Germanic and the Greek words were borrowed from the same unknown source.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A hard, steel-grey stone, found in nodules with a white crust: Old English, in the poem Christ I,[7][8] and with reference to striking sparks from it, in the Épinal Glossary.[7] In Old English flint could also mean a rock or hard stone in general,[8][2] and it was already used as a type of hardness, as in the Exeter Book riddle "I am harder than flint".[8][3]

Semantic evolution

The transferred senses based on hardness were already present in Old English;[3] in Middle English the word stood for anything hard or unyielding (c1330),[7][10] and for a pebble or nodule of the stone (c1300).[7] Flint appears as a surname in Lancashire pipe rolls of 1157–63.[5] Johnson (1755) described it as the stone that strikes fire with steel and is used in glassmaking.[12] From 1660 it named the piece of flint in the lock of a gun, and later the metal alloy that makes the spark in a lighter.[7] The figurative use for a miser, short for skinflint, is recorded from 1841, in Dickens.[7] In 18th-century slang flints were journeymen tailors who refused to work for the wages fixed by law, as opposed to dungs, who accepted them.[13][7] The verb, to fit a gun with a flint, is recorded from 1803.[7] In dialect the word formed compounds such as flint-knapper, a maker of gun flints, and Shropshire flint-coal, a seam of coal.[14]

Timeline

  • Old English – hard stone; a stone for striking fire.[7][15]
  • 1157–63 – as a surname.[5]
  • c1300 – a pebble or nodule of flint.[7]
  • c1330 – a type of hardness.[7]
  • 1536 – flinty.[5]
  • 1660 – the flint of a gunlock.[7]
  • 1785 – (slang) a tailor who held out for the legal wage.[13]
  • 1803 – verb, to fit a gun with a flint.[7]
  • 1841 – a miser.[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A hard grey to black form of quartz that breaks with sharp edges and gives off sparks when struck with steel; a piece of this stone.
  2. A piece of flint shaped as a tool or weapon in prehistoric times.
  3. A small piece of flint or of an alloy used to make a spark, as in a lighter or a flintlock gun.
  4. Something very hard or unyielding: a heart of flint.

Verb

  1. (archaic) To fit a gun with a flint.

Word family

  • flintlike
  • flinthead
  • flintlock
  • flinty
  • gunflint
  • skinflint
  • flint corn

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  13. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  14. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  15. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)