flinty
/ˈflɪnti
/adjective (flintier, flintiest)
1Of, containing, or reminiscent of flint: flinty soil a flinty wine...
- Its problem is that it is a very flinty wine that leaves a kind of sour aftertaste on every possible opportunity.
- Under my feet the flinty soil shattered into a thousand arrows pointing a hundred different ways.
- Perhaps this helps to explain why digging for randomness in the flinty soil of physics is such hard work.
1.1(Of a person or their expression) very hard and unyielding: a flinty stare...
- There is something old-fashioned in his manner which may explain why he excels as gruff authority figures and flinty men of the West.
- So here was Orwell, famous for being a flinty man of integrity, in effect throwing in the towel.
- She often has only a few moments of screentime to get across what phase Lureen is in, but as we follow her from a wild and flirty girl to a flinty woman trapped in a loveless marriage we feel a complete and three dimensional character.
Derivatives
flintily
- ‘You'd be surprised,’ he told me flintily, ‘how many people try it.’
- He has a way, this soft-pawed composer with his beard-softened face and gentle Accrington accent, of flintily returning questions to sender.
- Despite having lived in England for more than three decades, his Cambuslang accent remains flintily strong.
flintiness
/ noun ...- There is a unique streak of steely acidity, a firm flintiness and a mineral quality that is not found elsewhere in Burgundy.
- This wine has a roundness and flintiness that will develop with bottle age.
- He questions old saws with irreverence, humour, and flintiness, unencumbered by our proverbial politeness and our suffocating political correctness.