adamant Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun very hard native crystalline carbon valued as a gem
    diamond.
  2. adjective satellite impervious to pleas, persuasion, requests, reason; she would have none of him"- W.Churchill
    intransigent; adamantine; inexorable.
    • he is adamant in his refusal to change his mind
    • Cynthia was inexorable
    • an intransigent conservative opposed to every liberal tendency

WordNet

Ad"a*mant noun
Etymology
OE. adamaunt, adamant, diamond, magnet, OF. adamant, L. adamas, adamantis, the hardest metal, fr. Gr. , priv. + 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.
Definitions
  1. 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.
    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 1913