adamant
/ˈæd.ə.mənt/ adjective, noun
Forms adamants adamaunt
- adjective (said of people and their conviction) Firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.
- adjective (of an object) Very difficult to break, pierce, or cut.
- noun An unspecified mineral or rock of virtually impenetrable hardness.
- noun (historical or poetic) In later use: diamond.
- noun (poetic, archaic) In later use: a lodestone.
- noun (obsolete except historical) A substance that neutralizes lodestones.
- noun Chiefly in of adamant: an embodiment of impenetrable hardness; the quality of not being easily destroyed or overcome; impenetrableness, imperviousness, impregnableness; also, of a person: the quality of not being easily affected emotionally; impassiveness, unmovableness.
- noun (obsolete) A person or thing having the quality of attracting or drawing; a lodestone, a magnet.
Synonyms
impassivity impenetrability impregnability unmovability diamond adamantine inexorable intransigent
Etymology
From Middle English adamant, adamaunt, from Latin adamantem, accusative singular form of adamās (“hard as steel”), from Ancient Greek ἀδάμαντ- (adámant-, “invincible”), oblique stem of ἀδάμας (adámas). Doublet of diamond.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A stone imagined by some to be of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substance of extreme hardness; but in modern minerology it has no technical signification. It is now a rhetorical or poetical name for the embodiment of impenetrable hardness.
- noun Lodestone; magnet. [Obs.] "A great adamant of acquaintance." Bacon.
Etymology [OE. adamaunt, adamant, diamond, magnet, OF. adamant, L. adamas, adamantis, the hardest metal, fr. Gr. adamare to love, be attached to, the word meant also magnet, as in OF. and LL. See Diamond, Tame.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “adamant”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details