Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not willing to change one's opinion, purpose, or principles; unyielding.
  • noun A stone once believed to be impenetrable in its hardness.
  • noun An extremely hard substance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A name applied with more or less indefiniteness to various real or imaginary metals or minerals characterized by extreme hardness: as the diamond
  • noun the natural opposite of the diamond
  • noun a lodestone or magnet, and
  • noun an anti-magnet.
  • noun In general, any substance of impenetrable or surpassing hardness; that which is impregnable to any force.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun 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.
  • noun obsolete Lodestone; magnet.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.
  • noun A rock or mineral held by some to be of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness.
  • noun An embodiment of impregnable hardness.
  • noun A magnet; a lodestone.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason
  • noun very hard native crystalline carbon valued as a gem

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Middle English, a hard precious stone, from Old French adamaunt, from Latin adamās, adamant-, from Greek, unconquerable, hard steel, diamond; see demə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin adamantem, accusative singular form of adamās ("hard as steel"), from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adamas, "invincible"), from ἀ- (a-, "not") + δαμάζω (damazo, "I tame").

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Examples

Comments

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  • see also syn. adamantine (poet.) - "unbreakable"

    September 2, 2008

  • i particularly like the collocation "to be adamant that"

    September 2, 2008

  • one of my very favourite words. they forgot to put in the definition "a legendary rock or mineral to which many, often contradictory, properties were attributed, formerly associated with diamond or lodestone." that's my favourite part of this word.

    November 22, 2008

  • i also really wanted to include this, from the Oxford dictionary:

    ORIGIN Old English (as a noun), from Old French adamaunt-, via Latin from Greek adamas, adamant, ‘untamable, invincible’ (later used to denote the hardest metal or stone, hence diamond), from a- ‘not’ + daman ‘to tame.’ The phrase to be adamant dates from the 1930s, although adjectival use had been implied in such collocations as “an adamant heart�? since the 16th cent.

    November 22, 2008

  • "But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom." -Mahatma Gandhi (An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth)

    March 7, 2009

  • What, it doesn't mean to have hidden vices? "Don't smoke, don't drink...what do you do?"

    April 10, 2009

  • adamant can also be used to describe one's refusal to be persuaded or change mind

    July 5, 2009

  • Aw shoot! I must have left the sugar out.

    December 25, 2009

  • BK is an adamant manager who never accepts suggestions from his team members.

    February 15, 2013

  • adjective: refusing to change one's mind

    Civil rights icon Rosa Parks will forever be remembered for adamantly refusing to give up her seat on a public bus--even after the bus driver insisted, she remained rooted in place.

    October 19, 2016

  • cf. evewomant.

    February 1, 2018