adamant

• adamaunt (obsolete)

From Middle English adamant, adamaunt, from Latin adamantem, accusative singular form of adamās (“hard as steel”), from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adámas, “invincible”), from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + δαμάζω (damázō, “I tame”) or of Semitic origin. Doublet of diamond.

• IPA^(key): /ˈæd.ə.mənt/, /ˈæd.ə.mænt/

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• (Indic) IPA^(key): /ˈæ.ɖə.mᵻnʈ/, (spelling pronunciation) /ˈə.ɖə.mᵻnʈ/

adamant (comparative more adamant, superlative most adamant)

1. (said of people and their conviction) Firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.
   • 2002, Charles Moncrief, Wildcatters: The True Story of how Conspiracy, Greed and the IRS ..., page 195:

     Broiles and Kirkley were adamant about getting out of the lawsuit, but Mike and Dee were equally adamant about not wanting to sign a letter of apology

   • 2006, Cara E. C. Vermaak, Confessions of the Dyslexic Virgin, page 275:

     Johan is determined to play the field and adamant about never committing.

   • 2010, Deeanne Gist, Maid to Match, page 94:

     What good would such foolishness do a mountain man? But Pa had been adamant. Just as he'd been adamant about their reading, writing, numbers, geography, and languages. Just as he'd been adamant about using proper grammar

   • 2025 April 8, Whitney Eulich, Andrea Salcedo, “For Panamanians, the canal is theirs. But who profits from it?”, in The Christian Science Monitor:

     Most Panamanians are adamant that the canal, completed in 1914, will not return to U.S. control.

2. (of an object) Very difficult to break, pierce, or cut.
   • 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, page 34:

     Unprotected matter, however adamant, would have been ground to dust ages ago.

• See also Thesaurus:obstinate

adamant (plural adamants)

2. An unspecified mineral or rock of virtually impenetrable hardness.
   • 1582, Robert Parsons, chapter VIII, in The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution‎^[1], G. Flinton:

     This then is and alwayes hath ben the fashion of Worldlinges, & reprobate persons, to harden their hartes as an adamant stone, against anye thinge that shalbe tolde the for amendement of their lives, and for the savinge of their soules.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 3:9:

     As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead […]

   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 162:

     But this was a finale she ever avoided: an offer, like the rock of adamant in Sinbad's voyages, finishes the attraction by destroying the vessel; […]

   1. (historical or poetic) In later use: diamond.
   2. (poetic, archaic) In later use: a lodestone.
      • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

        You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant: / But yet you draw not iron, for all my heart / Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw, / And I shall have no power to follow you.

   3. (obsolete except historical) A substance that neutralizes lodestones.
      • 1657 [1608], Jean de Renou, translated by Richard Tomlinson, A Medicinal Dispensatory […], page 418:

        An Adamant hinders the attractive vertue, as also Garlick rubbed on the Magnet; for its attractive faculty is not so valid, but it may be easily deluded, obscured, and superated […]

      • 2012, Daryn Lehoux, What Did the Romans Knows? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking, →ISBN, page 139:

        But we know from book 37 of the Natural History that adamant works on magnets in exactly the same way that garlic does: robbing them of their power to attract.

3. (figurative)
   1. 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.

      Synonyms: impassivity, impenetrability, impregnability, unmovability

      • 1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter XV, in The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:

        Actual life might seem to her so real that she could not detect the union of shadow and adamant that men call poetry.

   2. (obsolete) A person or thing having the quality of attracting or drawing; a lodestone, a magnet.

• (imaginary desirably hard material): unobtainium

• “adamant”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “adamant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• IPA^(key): /ˈadamant/

adamant m (plural adamantow)

1. The mineral, diamond
2. A gemstone made from diamond.

adamant f (genitive singular adamainte, nominative plural adamaintí)

1. alternative form of adhmaint (“adamant, lodestone; magnet”)

• Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977), “adamant”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN

adamant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of adamō

• adamaunde, adamaunt, adamawnte, ademand, athamaunt

Learned borrowing from Latin adamantem, accusative of adamās, from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adámas). Doublet of dyamaunt and adamas.

• IPA^(key): /adəˈmant/, /adəˈmau̯nt/, /ˈadəmant/, /ˈadəmau̯nt/

adamant (plural adamants)

1. adamant, adamantine (valuable gemstone)
2. An invulnerable or indomitable object
3. A natural magnet; magnetite.

• adamantine

• English: adamant
• Scots: adamant (obsolete)

• “adama(u)nt, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 11 May 2018.

• adamante, adamaunt, aimand, aimande, aimant, äimant, aimante, aymant, aimaunt, aimont, aamant, amant, amand, aimas

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

adamant oblique singular, ? (oblique plural adamanz or adamantz, nominative singular adamant, nominative plural adamanz or adamantz)

1. adamant; diamond
2. lodestone; magnet

“adamant”, in Anglo-Norman Dictionary, Aberystwyth University, 2022–2026

• adamas, adament (Middle Polish)

Learned borrowing from Latin adamās, from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adámas, “invincible”).^[1] First attested in 1525.^[2] Doublet of diament.

• Rhymes: -amant
• Syllabification: a‧da‧mant

adamant m inan

1. adamant (an unspecified mineral or rock of virtually impenetrable hardness)
   • 2008, Zygmunt Kubiak, Mitologia Greków i Rzymian‎^[2], Świat Książki:

     A pojawił się też opiekun wędrowców, Hermes, i wręczył młodzieńcowi sierp z adamantu.

     And the guardian of the wanderers, Hermes, also appeared and gave the young man a sickle made of adamant

adamant m inan

1. (Middle Polish, mineralogy) diamond

   Synonym: diament

• Krystyna Siekierska (08.03.2012), “ADAMAS”, in Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII i XVIII Wieku [Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the XVII and XVIII Century]
• J. Karłowicz, A. Kryński, W. Niedźwiedzki, editors (1900), “adamant”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), volume 1, Warsaw, page 7

Borrowed from Old Church Slavonic адамантъ (adamantŭ).

adamant n (plural adamante)

1. (dated) diamond

   Synonym: diamant