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Flint   Listen
noun
Flint  n.  
1.
(Min.) A massive, somewhat impure variety of quartz, in color usually of a gray to brown or nearly black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture and sharp edge. It is very hard, and strikes fire with steel.
2.
A piece of flint for striking fire; formerly much used, esp. in the hammers of gun locks.
3.
Anything extremely hard, unimpressible, and unyielding, like flint. "A heart of flint."
Flint age. (Geol.) Same as Stone age, under Stone.
Flint brick, a fire made principially of powdered silex.
Flint glass. See in the Vocabulary.
Flint implements (Archaeol.), tools, etc., employed by men before the use of metals, such as axes, arrows, spears, knives, wedges, etc., which were commonly made of flint, but also of granite, jade, jasper, and other hard stones.
Flint mill.
(a)
(Pottery) A mill in which flints are ground.
(b)
(Mining) An obsolete appliance for lighting the miner at his work, in which flints on a revolving wheel were made to produce a shower of sparks, which gave light, but did not inflame the fire damp.
Flint stone, a hard, siliceous stone; a flint.
Flint wall, a kind of wall, common in England, on the face of which are exposed the black surfaces of broken flints set in the mortar, with quions of masonry.
Liquor of flints, a solution of silica, or flints, in potash.
To skin a flint, to be capable of, or guilty of, any expedient or any meanness for making money. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flint" Quotes from Famous Books



... him from the horrors of a loathsome jail. Human retribution cannot reach this guilt; human feeling may not penetrate the flinty heart that perpetrates it; but an hour is surely coming, with more than human retribution on its wings, when that flint shall be melted, either by the power of penitence and grace, or in ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... whether history is an indefinite progression or a series of constant cycles, and decided for the former view. (Memoire sur le cours periodique, 1785). Bock's monograph is the best study of Wegelin; but see also Flint's observations in Philosophy ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the first use of gunpowder, its composition, and invention; and, then, the improvements in modern weapons of war would follow as a natural consequence, which would end in their being compared with the old flint implements, that are so frequently found to the ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... are the rocks, the marble, and the steel, The ancient oak with wind and weather tossed; But you, my love, far harder do I feel Than flint, or these, or is the winter's frost. My tears too weak, your heart they cannot move; My sighs, that rock, like wind it cannot rent; Too tiger-like you swear you cannot love; But tears and sighs you fruitless back have sent. The frost ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... consented to the execution of his project. We then deviated from the road; and having got into a solitary glen, we gathered together some dry stubble and underwood, made a fire, striking a light with a flint and steel, which my companion carried about him. He took my poor ape into his hands, and, without further ceremony, put it to death. He then dissected it; and having taken from it the liver, and the skin off its nose, burnt it in the pile we had ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... XXXIV Her flint and steel, fell Discord, as he said, Took forth, and somewhile hammered on the stone. Pride, underneath, the ready tinder spread, And the quick fire was in a moment blown: This on the paynim's soul so fiercely fed, He could not find a resting place: 'mid groan And sob ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... communicated with the submerged mine, which was to explode at a nicely-calculated moment. The eruption of the other floating volcano was to be regulated by an ingenious piece of clock-work, by which, at the appointed time, fire, struck from a flint, was to inflame the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... were heard in his room as of one stepping out of bed, and presently the noise of flint and steel announced that a light was being struck. In a few minutes, the rather jaded-looking youth appeared at the bedside ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... that these matches should come into fashion just as I am going off the stage. Look! a light in the twinkling of an eye! Only think of all the time I've lost in the course of my life in striking a light with the old flint and steel,—days, weeks, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... said this on a former occasion to a lady, he said it also on a latter occasion to a gentleman—Mr. Spottiswoode. Post, April 28, 1778. Moreover, Miss Burney records in 1778, that when Johnson was telling about Bet Flint (post, May 8, 1781) and other strange characters whom he had known, 'Mrs. Thrale said, "I wonder, Sir, you never went to see Mrs. Rudd among the rest." "Why, Madam, I believe I should," said he, "if ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... to her apartments. There she lay upon her bed, and for a time her heart was like flint. Soon she thought of her precious golden heart pierced with a silver arrow, and tears came to her eyes as she drew the priceless treasure from her breast and breathed upon it a prayer to the God of love for help. Her heart was soft again, soft only as hers ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... ordnance stores, there was the greatest scarcity. Perhaps one half of the entire western army (of all the troops in the department) were armed (at the time that General Johnson came) with shot-guns and squirrel rifles, and the majority of the other half with scarcely as serviceable flint-lock muskets. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... made entirely by hand, with no implement but a common cut nail, the process is of course too slow to be valuable; but the result attained may very probably afford useful hints and suggestions to inventors of weaving machinery.—I think the display of Flint Glass by the Brooklyn Company is equal in purity and fineness to any other plain Glass in the Exhibition, and only regret that the quantity sent had not been larger. I regret far more that the "Hillotype," ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... tin variety—only "serving to make darkness visible" now found in a few old attics in Pilgrim towns, and on the "bull-carts" of the peons of Porto Rico, by night. Fire, for any purpose, was chiefly procured by the use of flint, steel, and tinder, of which many very early specimens exist. Buckets, tubs, and pails were, beyond question, numerous aboard the ship, and were among the most essential and highly valued of Pilgrim utensils. Most, if not ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... within her as she caught that phrase. That knot also would be cut. Modern, indeed! She was going to be as primordial as chipped flint. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... The canoes seemed so tiny here. I called the men at 6.30 A.M., and at nine we were ready to start. Before leaving, Job blazed two trees at the landing, and in one he placed a big flat stone on which I wrote with a piece of flint ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... bad... knows what he's about. One of the new generation. He's very polite, wears cuffs, and has his eyes about him no less than the old sort. He would skin a flint with his own hands and say, 'Turn to this side a little, please... there is still a living spot here... I must clean it!' He's nice enough to me, because I'm necessary to him. I just looked in to say that I may not get a chance of seeing you again today. Dinner will be brought to you here, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease As back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in years a little,—such a brow His eyes had to live under!—clear as flint On either side the formidable nose Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle's claw. Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate? When altogether old B. disappeared And young C. got his mistress,—was't our friend, His letter ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... grateful, is not sufficiently good to stand public opinion upon its own merits; but in combination its value is very great; possessing little aroma itself, yet it has the power of strengthening the odor of other fragrant bodies; like the flint and steel, which though comparatively incombustible, ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin were represented, all having held State contests. Levi T. Pennington of Earlham College won the first prize; subject, "The Evolution of World Peace." The second prize went to Harold P. Flint of Illinois Wesleyan University; subject, "America the Exemplar ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... progress and civilisation, by which our primaeval ancestors successively passed upwards through the varying eras and stages of advancement, from their first struggles in the battle of life with tools of stone, and flint, and bone alone, till they discovered and applied the use of metals in the arts alike of peace and war; from those distant ages in which, dressed in the skins of animals, they wore ornaments made of sea-shells and jet, till the times when they learned to plait and weave dresses of hair, wool, and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... there. Don Lope's angry feelings had given way to his fears for her safety, and as he wiped the cold dew from her face, he perceived blood trickling slowly down her marble brow. In the violence of her fall upon the gravelled walk, a flint had wounded her forehead, and the crimson drops that issued from it contrasted mournfully with the frozen paleness of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... woman flings the whiteness of her reputation in the dust, and, waking to the realization of her loss when the cruel glare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she seeks to plead her thoughtlessness as an entreaty of the world's pardon. But the flint-hearted world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. "You have thrown your rose in the dust, go live there with it," the world cries, and there is no appeal, although the dust become the grave of all that is bright and lovely and sweet in a thoughtless woman's really innocent life. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... globule within itself After inhabiting a garret and diving into the depths of his self- consciousness for a few score years, he was able to produce such complex globule in triturated and roasted flint by means of—I will not say what. Happily for creation in general, the discovery died a natural death some centuries ago. An edifying spectacle, indeed, for the world to see; a cross old man sitting amongst ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... Historic Preservation Society proposed a bill to create the Grand Canyon a national park of large size. The Geological Survey, to which it was referred, recommended a much smaller area. By the direction of President Taft, Senator Flint introduced a national-park bill which differed from both suggestions. The opposition of grazing interests threw it into the hands of conferees. In 1911 Senator Flint introduced the conferees' bill, but it was opposed ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... obviated, if an article at the head of every list required the former to be produced whole or broken, and the marked part of the linen, though all the others should be worn out. Glass is another article that requires care, though a tolerable price is given for broken flint-glass. Trifle dishes, butter stands, &c. may be had at a lower price than cut glass, made in moulds, of which there is a great variety that look extremely well, if not placed near the more ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... examine their municipal policy. This assumes special importance since the installation of Socialist officials in Berkeley (California), Butte (Montana), Flint (Michigan), several smaller towns in Kansas, Illinois, and other States, as a result of the elections of April, 1911. To these victories have recently been added others (in November, 1911) in Schenectady (New York), Lima and Lorain (Ohio), ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... hope seized on poor Sigismund; he sat down to the little table in his cell and wrote a letter to the procurator—a letter which might almost have drawn tears from a flint. Again and again he passionately asserted his innocence, and begged to know on what evidence he was imprisoned. He began to think that he could die content if he might leave this terrible cell, might be a free agent once more, if only for a few days. At least he might ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... is back," he said, and his glance turned towards the old flint-lock musket on the wall. That night Hannah dreamed of the feud, of the Glen and the burn, of love, of lobsters, and of the Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty. And when she rose in the morning there was a wistful look in her eyes, and there came ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... British. The militia and wood-rangers fought in their ordinary dress,—or, occasionally, with the object of terrifying their enemies, put on the war-paint and eagle-quills of the Indians. The muskets of the day were the heavy weapons known as flint-locks. When the trigger was pulled the flint came down sharply on a piece of steel, and the spark, falling into a shallow "pan" of powder called the "priming," ignited the charge. The regulars carried bayonets on the ends of their muskets, but the militia ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... said John. "Curse this flint!—flints are growing worse and worse every day—I wonder what in the world are become of all the good flints there used ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... Sir John, with great animation. "Was it Flint the mercer's wife, think you? Ah, she hath a liberal disposition, and will, without the aid of Prince Houssain's carpet or the horse of Cambuscan, transfer the golden shining pieces from her husband's coffers ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... milk from cows, but more frequently they transfer the milk to the cows of some person who stands high in their favour. This they do by making themselves invisible, and silently milking and removing the milk in invisible vessels. When people offend them they shoot flint-tipped arrows, and by this means kill either the persons who have offended them or their cattle. They cause these arrows to strike the most vital part, but the stroke does not visibly break the skin, only a blae mark is the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... during this time of trouble, Hibbert had found one more friend in Mrs. Trounce—the kind-hearted matron, who always tried to make the boys believe that she was a perfect virago with a heart of flint. Paul followed her on tiptoe to the bed and looked down on the sleeper. And as he looked, it seemed as though ice-cold fingers were clutching him by the heart-strings, so strangely still were the face and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... ideas. At the store he was now told of the great discouragements with which the rubber trade was contending, the merchants giving this as a reason for not taking to his improvement. The rubber, as then made, would become as hard as flint during cold weather, and if exposed to ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... in one of the cleared paths. From the big low roofed drill enclosure a hundred yards away came the dull thud of galloping hoofs and the voice of Sergeant Moody thundering instructions to the rookies. Moody had a heart like flint and would have faced blazing cannon to perform his duty. He had grown old and ugly in the service and was as beauty-proof as an ogre of stone. Why hadn't ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... was, that so many of our men would insist upon letting off the things they called guns at every little knot of the enemy that ran across. Thus, the first few lots were indeed practically swept away, but after that, as it took a long while to load the gas-pipes and old flint muskets, those who followed got across in comparative safety. For my own part, I fired away with the elephant gun and repeating carbine till they grew almost too hot to hold, but my individual efforts ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... showing a bit of a spirit. It's the good old Beresford blood. Why, the last Sir John but two shot his steward down, there where he stood, for just telling him that he'd racked the tenants, and he'd racked the tenants till he could get no more money off them than he could get skin off a flint.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... but arch his back to bear his burden and find some compensation elsewhere. True it is, that beneficent Nature here, as always, is helpful. Habit, after a while, mitigated much of the bitterness of destiny. The hard points of the flint became smoothed and worn away by perpetual tramping over them, so that they no longer wounded with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot was in time provided with a merciful callosity. Then, too, there was developed an ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... ordered to join him, and on the 6th of August the troops embarked at Chester Station and were transported to Mitchel Station, on the Richmond and Mannassas Railroad, not far from Culpepper. On the 12th the troops marched by Flint Hill, crossed the Blue Ridge, and camped near the ancient little hamlet of Front Royal. The next day we were moved about one mile distant to a large spring, near the banks of the beautiful and now classic Shenandoah. How strange to the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... and profitable. The following receipt I have found to answer all waters—yet there may be places where the distiller cannot follow this receipt exactly, owing to hard or soft water, (as it is generally termed) or hard flint or soft floury corn, that will either scald too much or too little—but this the attentive distiller will ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... determined to put an end to the business; and told the king's brothers that I considered myself as having paid the king very well for passing through his territory; that I would neither give him a single charge of gunpowder nor a flint; and if he refused to allow me to pass, I would go without his permission; and if his people attempted to obstruct us we would do our utmost to defend ourselves. The king's brothers and some of the old Bushreens insisted on ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... in cover of portmanteau, a case with shaving-things, combs, and a knife, fork, and spoon; a German pipe and tobacco-bag, flint, and steel; pipe-clay and {p.243} oil, with brush for laying it on; a shoe-brush; a pair of shoes or hussar-boots; a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... leaves, and removed fire, And stayed the wine, everywhere flowing in rivers; That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows, And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint." ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... nearly all sand where I lived, and coal grew on trees, and the periwinkles were as big as tea-trays - you find them now; they're turned into stone. We sand-fairies used to live on the seashore, and the children used to come with their little flint-spades and flint-pails and make castles for us to live in. That's thousands of years ago, but I hear that children still build castles on the sand. It's difficult to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... in the heart of the Black Belt, we stop. Two hundred miles south of Atlanta, two hundred miles west of the Atlantic, and one hundred miles north of the Great Gulf lies Dougherty County, with ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The Flint River winds down from Andersonville, and, turning suddenly at Albany, the county-seat, hurries on to join the Chattahoochee and the sea. Andrew Jackson knew the Flint well, and marched across it once to avenge the Indian Massacre at Fort Mims. That was in 1814, not long ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... without trembling, Kept on our feel by trumpet-calls, by fever, And by the songs we sang through conquered countries? Us upon whom for seventeen years—just think!— The knapsack, sabre, turn-screw, flint, and gun, Beside the burden of an empty belly, Made the sweet weight of five and fifty pounds? Us, who wore bearskins in the burning tropics And marched bareheaded through the snows of Russia, Who trotted ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... answer. Whizz came a flint, apparently out of the air, and missed Mr. Marvel's shoulder by a hair's-breadth. Mr. Marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for a moment, and then fling at his ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... held by five priests upon the stone of sacrifice, while the sixth, who was clothed in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his horrible office, cut open his breast with a sharp razor of 'itztli,' a volcanic substance as hard as flint, and tearing out his heart, held it first up to the sun, which they worshipped, and then cast it at the feet of the god to whom the temple was devoted; and to crown the horror, the body of the captive ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... everybody wishes that vengeance may overtake him for all the evil that he has done, and that it may put an end to his career of iniquity. He has never played before, at least since he has been in Paris; and so from all this you need not wonder at our being so greatly astounded when the old skin-flint appeared at your table. And for the same reasons we were, of course, pleased at the old fellow's serious losses, for it would have been hard, very hard, if the old rascal had been favoured by Fortune. It is only too certain. Chevalier, that the old fool has been deluded by the riches ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... from the determination of the line last mentioned in the latitude of 31 deg. north of the equator to the middle of the river Apalachicola, or Catahouche; thence along the middle thereof to its junction with the Flint River; thence straight to the head of St. Marys River, and thence down along the middle of St. Marys River to the Atlantic Ocean; east by a line to be drawn along the middle of the river St. Croix from its mouth in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... thee,—brow, eyes, and lips. Think wisely, and see clearly, and speak gently. Thy little bed at night shall hold thee safe As mine own arms,—thine elfin needle make Thy little room a bright and lovely bower. Thy household fairies Rainbow, Lodestone, Flint, Shall do thy will. Thy stars have said to me That thou wilt see far lands and many cities. Await thy Prince from that enchanted shore Beyond the rainbow's end, and read with him Thy magic runes. This charge I lay on him That he shall ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... that two bonnet-canes rubbed together produced a faint light. The novelty of this experiment induced me to examine it, and I found that the canes, on collision, produced sparks of light, as brilliant as those from flint and steel. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... a beauty. Single barrel, with a flint lock, so that it never wants no caps, and it comes out of the stock quite easy, and the barrel unscrews in the middle, and the ramrod too, so that you can put it all in your pocket, and nobody knows ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... ain't my head it's gone to. It's my heart." His words were gentle, but his eyes were as hard as flint. "I've been itching to get hold of you for some time, Jim, but I ain't seen any handle till now. Since you made me that offer up to your house t'other night I've been wanting to choke you. Yes, to choke ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... Harry, "laid up in a little bit of a stifling cabin, just like an oven, without the possibility of a breath of air! The skin-flint skipper carried no medicine; the water—shocking stuff it was—was getting so low, that there was only a pint a day served out to each, and though all of us Alcestes clubbed every drop we could spare for him—it was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... laid herself on the floor, flat on her back; and a man, kneeling beside her, and raising a flint stone, weighing upwards of twenty pounds, as high as he could, after several preliminary trials, dashed it, with all his force, against the breast of the convulsionist, giving her one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... down. This method, though it was the best we could contrive, might certainly lead us into many mistakes; for if an Indian was to take up a stone, and ask us the name of it, we might answer a pebble or a flint; so when we took up a stone and asked an Indian the name of it, he might pronounce a word that distinguished the species, and not the genus, or that instead of signifying stone simply, might signify a rough stone, or a smooth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... very names are faint guesses preserved only in the traditions of local speech. Strangely and suddenly we come upon the evidence of their life and death: here a circle of stones on a barren moor or bleak hilltop, there a handful of potsherds or a flint arrowhead; sometimes, indeed, though rarely, the bones of their very bodies, laid aside in earth-barrows or stone coffins for this unknown length of years. And there the most unreflective among us feels a sudden awe and wonder at the momentary vision of the profound ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... light sufficient to enable the pitmen to work by. The phosphorescence of decayed fish-skins was tried; but this, though safe, was very inefficient. The most common method employed was what was called a steel mill, the notched wheel of which, being made to revolve against a flint, struck a succession of sparks, which scarcely served to do more than make the darkness visible. A boy carried the apparatus after the miner, working the wheel, and by the imperfect light thus given forth he plied ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... art or invention is this: that the worker has wrought in his luminous mental moods. In its passive, inert states, the mind is receptive. Then reason is like a sheathed sword. Thought must be struck forth as fire is struck from flint. But under inspirational moods the mind begins to glow and kindle. Then the reason of the orator, the poet or reformer ceases to be like a taper, needing a match to light it, and becomes a sun, blazing with its own ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... water in rivers are by no means as pure as when they rose up into the sky. We shall see in the next lecture how rivers carry down not only sand and mud all along their course, but even solid matter such as salt, lime, iron, and flint, dissolved in the clear water, just as sugar is dissolved, without our being able to see it. The water, too, which has sunk down into the earth, takes up much matter as it travels along. You all know that the water ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... {36} bishop of Saint David's, and certifying to him the truth of this relation, because it had happened in his diocese. The stone is preserved in the church to this day among the relics, and the marks of the five fingers appear impressed on the flint as though ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... however rude. Then there is the kindling of fire, and the use of it for the purpose of cooking; and lastly, the preparation and the wearing of clothes. The tools or the clothes may be of the rudest kind, the tools may be formed from a flint, and the clothes from bark or skin, but in the preparation of each there are signs of intellectual power, of which we find no indications whatever in the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she struck flint on steel, caught the spark on tinder, and blew. Johnny watched the glow on her cheeks wakening and fading, and, watching, fell into ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the legs may not stumble for a mile or two, but it is in him, and the driver had better hold him up well. The tabby cat is not lapping milk just now, but leave the dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a thief as the kitten. There's fire in the flint, cool as it looks: wait till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see. Every body can read that riddle, but it is not every body that will remember to keep his gunpowder out of the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... face was as hard as flint. "I see I can't bluff you as easily as the Government man, but I give you fair warning that if you attempt to make use of your suspicions I'll find means of checkmating you. Just supposing you're not mistaken, a young man with any grit in him could live down ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... hereabouts, and as we have neither flint nor tinder, I don't see how we shall get a fire to ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... as Delphine,—we were allowed to call her by this familiar name among ourselves—the gift of drawing out the wit of her guests. With her, we always found ourselves in poetical raptures, and each left her salon amazed at himself. There was no flint so rough that she could not cause it to emit one spark; and with Balzac, as you may well believe, there was no need of trying to strike fire; he flashed and kindled at once." (Theophile Gautier, Life ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... manifested in flint (Yankee) corn, as it was called by people of the West and South, and many samples were given to people from all parts of the United States and ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... the literary world, too! Bet Flint wrote her own life, and called herself Cassandra, and it was in verse. So Bet brought me her verses to correct; but I gave her a half-a-crown, and she liked it ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... perhaps at the spring already mentioned, and was the first city taken in the conquest of the land under Joshua. The Jordan was crossed at Gilgal (Joshua 4:19), where the people were circumcised with knives of flint, and where the Jews made their first encampment west of the river. (Joshua 5:2-10.) "Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel," but by faithful compliance with the word of the Lord the walls fell down. (Joshua 6:1-27.) ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... great boaster, He the marvelous story-teller, He the traveler and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak-bough made the arrows. Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... prepared himself for some denial, for some pretense of ignorance, at least, and he was taken aback at this ready acceptance of his challenge. Something malevolent in her air increased his uneasiness. The girl was as hard as flint and seemed capable of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... ragged and so miserable give help to man or woman—that is what you would say, Daughter Neferte, is it not? Well, judge not from the outward seeming; good wine is often found in jars of common clay, and the fire hid in a rough flint can destroy ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... them, for instance, ordered a gun to be loaded and fired at him from a short distance, but in vain did the flint produce a shower of sparks; the Marabout pronounced some cabalistic words, and the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... vigor had sprung from the Mediterranean race,—fine, sharp and dry as flint, doing good and evil on a large scale with the exaggeration of an ardent character that discounts halfway measures and leaps from duplicity to the greatest extremes of generosity. Ulysses was the father of them all, a discreet and prudent hero, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... arranged without light, but when they had proceeded thus far, they worked no longer in the darkness. The chips were placed in the bottom of the furnace—the tinder was ignited by means of flint and steel—its burning edge was placed in contact with the fine resin-covered shavings of pine-wood; and in another instant the great vault, that had so late been buried in amorphous gloom, was sparkling like a chamber set ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... surveying, but told him he might take time to study up. As soon as Lincoln was assured that the appointment did not involve any political obligation—for Calhoun was a Jackson Democrat, and Lincoln was already a staunch Whig—he procured a copy of Flint and Gibson's "Surveying" and went to work with a will. With the aid of Mentor Graham, and studying day and night, he mastered the subject and reported to Calhoun in six weeks. The county surveyor was ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... iron chains, and that a vulture should prey upon his liver continually: but the truth of the story is, that Prometheus was an astrologer, and constant in observing the stars upon that mountain; and, that, among other things, he found the art of making fire, either by the means of a flint, or by contracting the sun-beams in a glass. Bochart will have Magog, in the Scripture, to be the Prometheus ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... depend a good deal upon what sort of rock this is around us. It isn't flint, anyhow. I take it to be either lime or sandstone. If so, we needn't stay here much longer than it would be safe to go out again among those ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... they had reached the back-kitchen door, just as Sylvia had unladen herself, and was striking a light with flint and tinder. The house seemed warm and inviting after the piercing outer air, although the kitchen into which they entered contained only a raked and slumbering fire at one end, over which, on a crook, hung the immense pan of potatoes cooking for the evening meal of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... you have a flint, a small one, And a little piece of tinder, Strike a light as quick as may be, Light the pine-chip in the holder, 140 Then go out to clear the cowshed, And the cattle do thou fodder, For the mother's cow is lowing, And the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... architecture in all Canada. The snowflakes of almost three hundred winters have fallen into its cavernous depths since these stones and mortar were laid. When Champlain stood by its hearth, as its first blaze, lighted by tinder and flint, roared up to the sky—William Shakespeare was still writing his sublime lines, Queen Elizabeth had lain but twelve years in her marble tomb, and the Chateau de Ramezay was not to be built for a hundred years to come. Often in the two years during which it had for La Salle ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... called by the settlers, was wonderfully beautiful in the twilights of the sun and moon. Mount Hood was a celestial glory, and the shadows of the year softened the glimmering glories of the Columbia. The boatman's call echoed long and far, and the crack of the flint-lock gun leaped in its reverberations from hill to hill as though the air was a succession of hollow chambers. Water-fowl filled the streams and drifted through the air, and the forests seemed filled with young and beautiful animals ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... in the course of repairing the central trilithon, careful excavations were carried out over a small area at Stonehenge. More than a hundred stone implements were found, of which the majority were flint axes, probably used for dressing the softer of the sandstone blocks, and also for excavating the chalk into which the uprights were set. About thirty hammer-stones suitable for holding in the hand were found. These were doubtless used for dressing ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... conversation from some of the terrors of superstition, but those of reason increased, as, waiting while Ugo searched for a flint, to strike fire, she watched the pale lightning gleam over the woods they were about to enter, and illumine the harsh countenances of her companions. Ugo could not find a flint, and Bertrand became impatient, for the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... Flint, of Edinburgh University, a clergyman, author of a big book attacking Socialism, and bringing us back to the faith ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... walk of over a mile through an open drain. The walls were of chalk as hard as flint. Unlike the mud trenches in Artois, there were no slides to block the miniature canal. It was as firm and compact as a whitewashed stone cell. From the main drain on either side ran other drains, cul-de-sacs, cellars, trap-doors, and ambushes. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... Nothing pleased that young man more than a chance to display his own first knowledge of political affairs, either local, state, or national. A single word of politics never failed to fire his ambition, to light that one spark in his cold eyes. And Philip Alston knew how to strike the flint that lit this spark, as he knew how to do almost anything that he wished to do. So that William now told him what it was that these two powerful guardians of the public peace and safety had met to discuss. He also told him everything that the judge had said ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... perhaps, that he had not asked the forester to keep his information secret? He took a few steps forward, then stopped. "It is too late," he mused, and reached for his hat. There was a soft pecking in the thicket, not twenty paces from him. It was the forester sharpening his flint-stone. Frederick listened. "No!" he said in a decisive tone, gathered up his belongings, and hastily drove the cattle down ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... West and among the Indians and Mexicans of two continents now carries a flint and steel, and a dry substance to catch and retain the spark. This substance with a full outfit can now be had in most stores that supply sporting goods, and every camper should ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... own natural weakness, and timorousness shall not overcome thee.—For it shall not be too hard for God. God can make the most soft spirited man as hard as an adamant, harder than flint, yea harder than the northern steel. "Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?" (Jer 15:12). The sword of him is [used] in vain that lays at a Christian, when he is in the way of his duty to God: if God has taken to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... up in fine style. She is no historian, but in poetry and fiction none of us can touch her; though, by the way, Polly's abilities in that direction are a good deal underrated. It's as good as a play to get her after Jack when he is in one of his teasing moods. They are like flint and steel, and if Aunt Truth didn't separate them the sparks would fly. With a girl like Polly, you have either to lie awake nights, thinking how you'll get the better of her, or else put on a demeanour of gentleness ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... kings of France themselves. Their badge, or impresa, was indicative of their rude power; a couple of knotted clubs, saltier-wise, help to support a somewhat conventional figure of the steel used for striking the flint to produce fire; the whole surmounted by the crown, and intended to indicate by analogous reflection the vigour of the ducal house. As a bold defiance, a rival house adopted the rabot, or carpenter's plane, by which they indicated ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... had been, in his own phrase, "weather-bound" at Westbury, and was there still, safe in the chimney-corner, his shrewd face puckered with thought and care, his steady old heart full of resolute bravery, and longing for the time to come; flint and steel ready to strike fire on the slightest collision. On the other side of the hearth from Snapps sat Zekle in his butternut-colored Sunday suit; the four young men ranged in a grim row of high-backed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... a note of fear in her quick, astonished exclamation. With his arm gripped round her she recognised how utterly powerless she would be against his immense strength, and something flint-like and merciless in the expression of those piercing eyes which were blazing down at her made her feel, with a sudden catch at her heart, as though he might actually do the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses; for scarcely had I turned my mind to the former, when I also mounted the wild cob, and hurried forth in the direction of the Devil's Hill, scattering dust and flint-stones on every side; that ride, amongst other things, taught me that a lad with thews and sinews was intended by nature for something better than mere word-culling; and if I have accomplished anything in after life worthy of mentioning, I believe it ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... and in this very furnace of affliction has my heart of flint, and my loose sand of character, that would not fix itself to any good, been melted down by God, to what you see. Let Him have all the ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

... size of flint grains when the brick is carefully crushed. The scale of these sizes may be considered: Small, size of anthracite rice; large, size of ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... garde champetre in Louis Philippe's blue and silver, with his black pipe, his gaiters, his old flint gun, and his embroidered game-bag. He does ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... for treating a wound was for the priest to gash open the wound with a small bit of flint, suck the blood and other matter from it, and finally apply to it the powder of a root. A colonist in describing the practice wrote that "they have many professed phisitions, who with their charmes and rattels, with an infernall rowt ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... variation: I do not mean in time, but in space. There is not a leaf in the world which has the same color visible over its whole surface; it has a white high light somewhere; and in proportion as it curves to or from that focus, the color is brighter or grayer. Pick up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes and hues of color. Every bit of bare ground under your feet has in it a thousand such—the gray pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might keep a painter at work ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... the pistol a bout portant with deliberation; the flint, in the familiar irony of fate, missed fire, and there was nothing more to do with the treacherous weapon but to throw it in the face of the Highlander. It struck full; the trigger-guard gashed the jaw and the metalled butt spoiled the sight of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... and individually amiable. They at least seemed to love their fellow men. Each had been tried by many adventures. Each had gone, as it were, "through the flint mill." Born to good conditions—Mr. Blaine sprang from aristocratic forebears—each knew by early albeit brief experience the seamy side of life; as each, like Clay, nursed a consuming passion for the presidency. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson



Words linked to "Flint" :   firestone, metropolis, obdurate, city, Michigan, flint glass, heartless, flintstone, granitic, flinty, gunflint, mi, Flint River, Great Lakes State, optical flint, silica, silicon dioxide



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