Etymologically
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adamant

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈæd.ə.mənt/, /ˈæd.ə.mænt/[1]

Etymology

The noun came into Middle English from Old French adamant (“diamond; magnet”),[2][3][4] from Latin adamās (accusative adamantem) “the hardest metal, diamond”,[2][3][5] from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adámas, “the hardest material; unconquerable”).[2][3][4] The Greek word is perhaps from a- “not” and damân “to tame, conquer”,[3][6][4] though Etymonline notes that it may be a foreign word reshaped by folk etymology.[3] Old English had the word as athamans, but the modern form is a fresh borrowing.[3][6] Diamond is a variant of the same word.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English used it of a legendary rock of extreme hardness (885).[7][4] The modern noun dates from the mid-14th century.[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Since antiquity the name has been applied loosely to very hard substances: steel, emery, and above all the diamond.[3] Medieval writers also identified it with the lodestone or magnet,[7][4] perhaps through confusion with Latin adamare “to love passionately”.[3] An adjective meaning “hard, unbreakable” appeared in the late 14th century,[3][4] and the figurative sense of “unyielding” is recorded by the 1670s.[3][4] Merriam-Webster dates the adjective in this sense to 1897.[5]

Timeline

  • 885 – a fabulously hard stone.[7][4]
  • 1366 – identified with the lodestone or magnet.[7]
  • 1393 – identified with the diamond.[7]
  • late 14th century – adjective, hard and unbreakable.[3][4]
  • 1670s – figurative adjective, unshakeable in belief.[3][4]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Refusing to change one's mind; stubbornly unyielding and not open to persuasion.
  2. Too hard to cut, break or pierce.

Noun

  1. A legendary stone once believed to be impossible to break.
  2. Any extremely hard substance.

Word family

  • adamantly
  • adamance
  • adamantine
  • diamond
  • tame

Usage notes

Random House gives inflexible, rigid and uncompromising as synonyms, and flexible, easygoing and yielding as antonyms.[6]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
  7. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press