Ad"a*mant (ăd"ȧ*mănt), n.
[OE. adamaunt, adamant, diamond, magnet, OF. adamant,
L. adamas, adamantis, the hardest metal, fr. Gr.
'ada`mas, -antos; 'a priv. +
dama^,n 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 substances of extreme hardness; but in modern
mineralogy 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.