Other forms: flints
Flint is a very hard stone that strikes sparks and flakes to an edge. A flint blade, strike a flint, flint tools.
It breaks with a curved fracture that leaves a razor edge, which is why it was the material of choice for tools for hundreds of thousands of years — a fresh flint flake is sharper than a steel scalpel. It strikes sparks against steel rather than against itself. Note flinty, meaning hard and unyielding.
1nounflintA very hard stone that flakes to a sharp edge.
“Early people shaped flint into knives and arrowheads.”
flint is a stone.
Old English flint names the stone, from a Germanic root. Its ultimate origin is uncertain.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)plind- — to split, cleave
Proto-Germanic
*flintaz
Proto-West Germanic
*flint
Old English
flint
Middle English
flynt
English, today
flint
Built from
From Middle English flynt, flint, from Old English flint, from Proto-West Germanic flint, from Proto-Germanic flintaz (compare Dutch vlint, flint (“flint, cobblestone”), German Flins, Flint (“flint, pebble”), Danish flint (“flint”)), from Proto-Indo-European (s)plind- (“to split, cleave”) (compare Irish slinn (“slate, shingle”), Ancient Greek πλίνθος), from (s)pley- (“to split”). More at split.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA