adamant meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

adamant

adj

/ˈæd.ə.mənt/ · /ˈæd.ə.mænt/

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.

Firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.

Said of people and their conviction

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 apology2002, Charles Moncrief, Wildcatters: The True Story of how Conspiracy, Greed and the IRS ..., page 195:
Johan is determined to play the field and adamant about never committing.2006, Cara E. C. Vermaak, Confessions of the Dyslexic Virgin, page 275:

2 more examples

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 grammar2010, Deeanne Gist, Maid to Match, page 94:
Most Panamanians are adamant that the canal, completed in 1914, will not return to U.S. control.2025 April 8, Whitney Eulich, Andrea Salcedo, “For Panamanians, the canal is theirs. But who profits from it?”, in The Christian Science Monitor, archived from the original on 28 Apr 2025:

Of an object Very difficult to break, pierce, or cut.

Unprotected matter, however adamant, would have been ground to dust ages ago.1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, page 34:

adamant

noun

An unspecified mineral or rock of virtually impenetrable hardness.

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.1582, Robert Parsons, chapter VIII, in The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution, G. Flinton:
As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 3:9:

1 more example

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

Historical, Poetic In later use: diamond.

Archaic, Poetic In later use: a lodestone.

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.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):

A substance that neutralizes lodestones.

Obsolete except historical

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 […]1657 [1608], Jean de Renou, translated by Richard Tomlinson, A Medicinal Dispensatory […], page 418:
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.2012, Daryn Lehoux, What Did the Romans Knows? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking, →ISBN, page 139:

Figuratively 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.

Actual life might seem to her so real that she could not detect the union of shadow and adamant that men call poetry.1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter XV, in The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:

Figuratively, Obsolete A person or thing having the quality of attracting or drawing; a lodestone, a magnet.

Derived terms: adamance, adamantane, adamantean, adamantic, adamantine, adamantium, adamantize, adamantly
Related terms: unobtainium