Ad"a*mant (#), n. [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.]

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.

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