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Webster 1913 Edition


Adamant

Ad′a-mant

(ăd′ȧ-mănt)
,
Noun.
[OE.
adamaunt
,
adamant
, diamond, magnet, OF.
adamant
, L.
adamas
,
adamantis
, the hardest metal, fr. Gr.
ἀδάμας
,
-αντος
;
priv. +
δαμᾶ,ν
to tame, subdue. In OE., from confusion with L.
adamare
to love, be attached to, the word meant also
magnet
, as in OF. and LL. See
Diamond
,
Tame
.]
1.
A stone imagined by some to be of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness; but in modern mineralogy it has no technical signification. It is now a rhetorical or poetical name for the embodiment of impenetrable hardness.
Opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold
adamant
, his ample shield.
Milton.
2.
Lodestone; magnet.
[Obs.]
“A great adamant of acquaintance.”
Bacon.
As true to thee as steel to
adamant
.
Greene.

Webster 1828 Edition


Adamant

AD'AMANT

,
Noun.
[ Gr.; L. adamas; a word of Celtic origin.]
A very hard or impenetrable stone; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness. The name has often been given to the load stone; but in modern mineralogy, it has no technical signification.

Definition 2024


adamant

adamant

English

Alternative forms

Adjective

adamant (comparative more adamant, superlative most adamant)

  1. 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

Synonyms

  • See also Wikisaurus:obstinate

Translations

References

  • adamant at OneLook Dictionary Search

Noun

adamant (plural adamants)

  1. An imaginary rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness.
    • 1582, Robert Parsons, chapter 8, in The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution, 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.
  2. An embodiment of impregnable hardness.
    • 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, p 34
      Unprotected matter, however adamant, would have been ground to dust ages ago.
  3. A magnet; a lodestone.
    • 159496, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream:
      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.

Translations

Derived terms

References

  • adamant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Irish

Noun

adamant f (genitive singular adamainte, nominative plural adamaintí)

  1. Alternative form of adhmaint (adamant, lodestone; magnet)

Declension

Mutation

Irish mutation
Radical Eclipsis with h-prothesis with t-prothesis
adamant n-adamant hadamant unchanged
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every
possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

References


Latin

Verb

adamant

  1. third-person plural present active indicative of adamō