Definition of "dint"

Much daunted with that dint, her sence was dazd […]

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

Between them cross-bows stood, and engines wrought / To cast a stone, a quarry, or a dart, // From whence, like thunder's dint, or lightnings new, / Against the bulwarks stones and lances flew.

1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XI, xxxi

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel / The dint of pity

1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

It was by dint of passing strength / That he moved the massy stone at length.

1805, Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, section XVIII

and read the naked shield, […] Of every dint a sword had beaten in it, / And every scratch a lance had made upon it

1860, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Lancelot and Elaine”, in Idylls of the King

His hands had made a dint, and hurt his maid; / Explored her limb by limb, and feared to find / So rude a gripe had left a livid mark behind.

1717, John Dryden [et al.], “Book 10”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

Your helmet was dinted in as if by a great shot.

1854, W. Harrison Ainsworth, The Star-Chamber, Volume 2‎

And, in that moment came one, fierce and wild of aspect, in dinted casque and rusty mail who stood and watched--ah God!

1915, Jeffery Farnol, Beltane The Smith‎