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.