online medical dictionary | definition of adamant

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. "A great adamant of acquaintance." "As true to thee as steel to adamant." (Greene)

Origin: 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.

(01 Mar 1998)