[See LOCK.] a. A gun-lock in which a flint, screwed to the cock, is struck against the hammer and produces sparks which ignite the priming in the flash-pan. Also attrib., as flint-lock gun, musket. b. A gun fitted with this lock.
1683. Sir Jas. Turner, Pallas Armata, 176. It were therefore good, that for the half of the Muskets (if not for them all) flint-locks were made and kept carefully by the Captain of Arms of each Company, that upon any such occasion or party, the half or more of the other Locks might be immediately taken off, and the flint-ones clapt on by the Gunsmith of the Company, and then there would be no danger of seeing burning Matches, the sight whereof hath ruin’d many good designs.
1833. J. Holland, Manuf. Metal, II. 89. The soldiers of that duchy [Brunswick] first obtained, in 1687, flint-locks, instead of match-locks.
1887. Whitaker’s Almanack, 541. The old flint-lock musket became famous in the Peninsular War under the name of ‘Brown Bess.’
Hence Flint-locked a., fitted with a flint-lock.
1885. M. Thompson, Hodson’s Hide-out, in Century Mag., XXIX. 684/1. The pine-smoked walls and ceiling, the scant, primitive furniture, the scrupulously clean puncheon floor, the long flint-locked rifle, the huge ‘stick-and-dirt’ fire-place, the broad, roughly laid hearth and the smoke-grimed wooden crane, all taken together, made an entourage in perfect accord with the figures, the costumes, and the predicament.
